Preparing for state certification!

Hi All,

I am a fairly new hospice nurse, I work for a homecare agency and we just started a hospice team a few months ago. Most of the patients live in the nursing home of the facility that our homecare division is located in (I started in homecare, now am doing both until we get certified), which makes life a little easier, but we do have a few patients living at home too. The state is coming soon for certification...does anyone have any tips/advice/suggestions? It would be greatly appreciated!

omg...that is a big bite you are asking for. Are you in management or are you a field nurse?

How familiar are you with hospice policy/procedure? Are you familiar with the CoPs?

Just like with home care, bag technique and standard precautions in the home setting will be high on the list. The completness of the hospice patient record and the IDT meetings and documentation will be reviewed. Make sure your medication reconciliation documentation is accurate and up to date. Make sure that your employee and volunteer files are up to date and contain all of the required information.

I could go on and on, but mostly it is going to be similar to surveys in the Home Care setting.

good luck!

Thank you for the response, tewdles! Sorry I just noticed it, have been so busy...after the grueling process we passed and just received certification yesterday! All the points you mentioned were biggies, and I am now technically the "hospice RN supervisor"...now the work really starts!!