Private duty nursing???

[cmgLPN09]

So I have an interview this week for a home health LPN position. The description that I was emailed included private duty LPN providing direct care to a patient in their home 6-12 hours/shift/day depending on case. My experience has been in a hospital settimg and since I had a baby 10 weeks ago, I wanted something more flexible like home health. So my question is, what exactly is private duty nursing? I'm assuming I would be providing care to one patient/day for the hours listed above. Can someone list some experiences and examples of what care is provided to one patient in a 6-12 hour day like. I was more interested in seeing a variety of patients throughout the day in more short visits as in home health nursing. Thanks in advance :)

[Deetermined]

I'm looking to get into private duty nursing myself. Did you apply with an agency? I've been looking on the internet and nothing other than peds private duty is coming up and I'm not interested in that at ALL! lol Thanks for your help.

Now to answer your question: my friend did private duty nursing. Her patient was on a vent, had a peg tube. So she mainly provide trach care, gave meds, assessed, made sure he was turned and she also had a cna that came in to help as well. At first she was overwhelmed but then she got into a routine and said it was very easy so I guess it depends on what your patient's diagnoses are and what type of equipment is needed to support that patient. Hope this gives you a better idea. Good luck

[cmgLPN09]

Thanks for the info, it did give a clearer picture. I applied to carelink home care services. They did list peds as their main focus, however they did say they see patients of all ages. I have an interview this week and will let you know what is said. I'm curious to see how it goes. I also applied to a few staffing agencies and maxim called back with a prn lpn position. I fax my documents to them on Monday to begin the interview process.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

check out an's private duty nursing forum for info this specialty

[caliotter3]

You can find many threads and posts that describe intermittent visit nursing as well as extended care nursing in the home health forum. You really might want to consider whether you want to start with intermittent visits versus shift work as some agencies are more willing to provide full time visit work that usually entails some time spent working on follow-up and paperwork at home. When you complete your nursing note for your shift and leave the home, you are done for the day. Nobody says you have to do five shifts a week or that you even have to do an eight hour shift. Some shifts are set up for four or six hours. Check into it.