New grad, new to home health - overwelmed

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I'm a new grad, never worked in health field at all and started my first job as a home health nurse a couple of weeks ago. I am so overwhelmed. I have 50 patients. I only see them for re-cert and starts, the rest of the time I'm in the office doing the paperwork, writing orders, and taking phone calls. For my orientation, I went on visits with another nurse for 3 days and then was just handed over a patient load. I just feel like I have no idea what I'm doing and I aced nursing school, but now feel like I know nothing. Anyone know any good books that will help me with this job. Anyone know if the "first year as a nurse" type books are useful in home health? I just feel like I'm in a whole new world that nursing school in no way prepared me for. This jobs pay and hours are perfect for my life and the work would be perfect for me too if i felt I knew what I was doing. I just feel like I don't know enough for such an independent position. I want to do good at it and keep at it, but I just hate feeling so discouraged with all the work that is just foreign to me and some of the lpns who are the field nurses are just rude when they ask me stuff or give me info about my patients and I don't immediately know what to do. Any information or help on how to improve and become the best nurse i can would be helpful.

I am sincerely amazed that an lpn is making $22/hour.

I find the kind of work I do to be very low key at a certain point. I do not find it to be overly stressful except when the family is demanding. That only happened once for me.

When I started out doing what my agency calls Case Management, I didn't get my own patient load for at least a month. I went out on visits with other nurses watching them for about a week. Then I did the visits and another nurse watched me for about a week. Then I started doing just Supervisory visits for the other nurses and gradually reassessments or SOC's. I didn't get a patient load of my own for 4 weeks and even then it was a smaller amount of patients then the other nurses had. They all helped me with paperwork questions and the Nursing Supervisor checked all my work and checked my tracking logs to see if I was calculating when the next Reassessment/Sup.visits were due. None of our nurses are cut loose in 3 days with a full load. I think that is way too soon, especially for a new grad. This was my orientation and I had 18 yrs of Home Care experience.

I am now the Nursing Supervisor of the same agency and since I started in this capacity, I have hired 4 Case Managers over the past 2 yrs. I have done the same thing with them. I only cut them loose when I am sure they can do all aspects of the job and that they feel confident in their role. All of my case managers work well together and help each other out when their calendar is too full, they aren't sure how to write an order, etc. It's a team effort. Since my nurses also write their Medicaid PA's, we keep their case load under 30 for each nurse.

I agree with the others, for a new grad, this is a very overwhelming job and I think giving you a case load of 50 patients after 3 days is terribly irresponsible of this agency. I can't even hire a nurse without at least one year experience for field staff private duty nursing.

Kyasi

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