baxt

I am brand new to home health and I am having a really hard time with it. I have three years experience in tele/PCU and two of those years are as a multi-hospital float nurse. I loved floating but the 12 hour shifts were really getting to me physically and mentally, especially because I always worked night shift. Well I transferred to home health within the same company and the disorganization/overwhelming patient loads are wearing me down. Orientation was MESSY! The nurse preceptor wanted me to just follow her and do all the physical work (take vitals, draw blood, assessments) while she refused to teach me the charting system (she was constantly flustered and rushing through everything, said we had no time to go over it, but that we will another day... every day). I stood up and had my preceptor changed, but I left orientation without ever being shown the protocol for admissions and discharges because for some inconvenient reason, no admits or discharges were scheduled during my orientation with any of my preceptors. After orientation I had to come in to the office to learn on my own time from the supervisor who was also overwhelmed by their own patient load. I have also been put into bad situations where I show up to a patient who had orders changed, where the orders were faxed to the office but never uploaded to my computer system. I could not see them because the office uses a separate computer program and the field nurses do not have access to it. The office will create half of a schedule for me the night before and then send me three more patients by 1000 the day of my shift. My job is salary, Monday to Friday and the hours are supposed to be 0800-1700, however every shift I work is truly 0800-2000 by the time I get done with calls and charting. It seems impossible to stay organized here and I am worried about losing my license. When I ask questions it feels more like I am in the way or inconveniencing people so I see this as the culture of the workplace since everyone seems frazzled all the time. I don't see these issues going away as I gain more experience. How do I get out of this? I plan to leave ASAP but my company has a strict policy that says I have to stay for 6 months before I transfer to another department. So I can't go back to my float job. I want to change companies but how do I explain this to a new employer? I love nursing, I love working with patients, but not when I am pressed for time like this. I didn't realize I was signing up for 60 hour weeks. I am looking into a few different job prospects, but when it comes time for the interview what am I supposed to say? Won't it look bad that I switched to home health and immediately left within one month? I want to be honest and tell them home health is not for me, but I also don't want to look like someone who job hops and who cannot be trusted to stay. How do I highlight my strengths without shining too much light on my weakness (transferring to home health and really disliking it)? Thank you nurses for reading! I look forward to your responses.