Lbushue

I'm sure you made your decision already but I figure I could give you an idea of home health. $27/visit is pretty low but I guess it depends on where you live. I work with a home health agency here in Houston, TX. I started off as a quality assurance nurse in the office just to get my feet wet and soon they were offering me patients. I get $40-60/visit, depends on the case and distance. I think it's a great supplemental income in addition to working at an LTAC. Most of the time you get about 6-8 patients which can be done in a day or split up through out the week. I prefer getting them done in a day. Some patients, especially wound care, may be daily bid. Some patients are only vitals and you're out in 15 minutes. Some patients are as you said: trache, tube feedings, foley cath changes, wound care, etc and you are there 30-60 min. Only thing you may not like is that you may have 8 patients per week for 3 weeks and the 4th week you may only 5. So your income won't be consistent. Most of the nurses I work with have a hospital job or work with a second agency. Good luck.

I had 7 patients to care for yesterday. The night shift labs were not good and I was told I would have to redraw all of my patients. We have 17 patients and 2 CNA's. 5 patients were total care, ICU status and cared for by the RN's. I spent my entire day passing meds and drawing labs. On top of that I had to bathe and give peri care to 3 of my patients and complete documentation. One doctor showed up at change of shift in the am and I didn't even know. The unit secretary, who was our charge nurse, never put the chart with orders in the slot for nurses to sign off. I found the orders during my 12 hour chart check. Two more doctors came in at change of shift for the evening and again my charge nurse did not put the charts out to be signed off. I knew these orders were there but the Charge nurse said not to sign them off since she did not put them into the system and it was already 1900. So now the night shift charge nurse and floor nurses are upset with me that I didn't do anything and they called me this morning to cut me. I feel confused about what was the right thing to do. I think that I could have carried out the orders but not sign them off. I also don't get why the nurses are upset with me because I don't pick on them if they don't take care of orders when they come during the morning change of shift. Is it my responsibility to take care of orders when they show up during change of shift regardless of day or night? This is my first hospital job and I have been off of orientation for almost two weeks. I know I am inexperienced and make mistakes but I try my best. I feel like I am a bad nurse and feel so embarrassed. Do I have bad time management? Am I having issues with order of priority? I need to figure this out. Please share your opinions and advice, I will greatly appreciate it. L.B.:imbar

Hello everyone, This should be interesting since I have never joined a forum before. Looks like I can get a lot of good advice and infornation over here so I decided to give it a go. I'm 27 from Houston and just started getting into the education of Nursing. I was an accountant before and couldn't stand it. I've always wanted to get into nursing but life happened to take me another route. Well, I lost my job and decided this was the best time to go for what I want. I don't think it's too late for me to become an RN but I feel that I may have obstacles in my way. Right now I am in a CNA class and plan on getting my prequisits out of the way. I was thinking of studying for LPN and if things go well continue with my RN. Reason being is that I still need to work to survive. I don't think that I will be able to go straight to RN for 3 years and work for barely over minimum wage in the mean time. Some say just go all the way to RN in one shot and others understand what I need to do. Is there a way to get a job in the hospital or a LTC that pays decent if I decide to go straight through to RN? Thanks a lot everyone! Lbushue