flasandy42

How do I evaluate the agencies? What about pay - hourly vs. per visit - which is better? How can I get up to speed fairly quickly? What would a good orientation consist of? I'm use to a very brief orientation at present but what would be sufficient for someone new to HH? Anything that I'm not aware of that I should consider?>>> I'm an LPN and I did hospital med-surg nursing for 40 years. After I retired I started doing home health and I'm so much happier. Having one pt at a time is heaven. I do both private duty shifts and visits. The pros are that you can work when you want to and choose your cases. I enjoy the autonomy but I have 40 years experience so I'm comfortable in most situations. My orientation was following a nurse on several visits then going out on my own. You always have support by calling the office if you have a problem. The cons are that you may not always get full-time work. I did three eight-hour shifts a week for seven months with one pt and did other visits as they were available, but when he went into the hospital I didn't always get a pt to replace him, so you can't always count on a full weeks pay. I'm in a seasonal area and summers are usually slow. Luckily, I don't have to depend on the income because it's supplemental to my social security. I DO know that I'll never go back to hospital nursing. It about killed me!

>>> Well WE know that LPN stands for "Low Paid Nurse" and RN stands for "Rich Nurse".......right? I never told my pt's I was their LPN...I just said I was their nurse.

>>> I admit that I will ask a male nurse for lifting help more than I do females, and some do get upset about it. I have 40 years of stress on my back and was terrified of hurting it more. I can't blame them when they have their own work to do, but I do try to do another task for them n return.

I was sorry to see the cap go. Now no one knows who the nurses are from dietary, housekeeping and other departments. I was proud to wear my cap, but the new younger nurses worried about it messing up their hair. Now they wear long hair that hangs down over the pt....long nails that can scratch, and dirty sneakers. Yes, I'm old....and darn proud of it, but at least I looked and felt like a nurse when I worked. :nurse:

I would NOT recommend any of the HCA hospitals, and there are many in the Tampa Bay area. Most of the travelers in my hospital were very unhappy and could hardly wait for their contract to end.

One thing that I've noticed is that there are very few male nurses who actually do floor nursing. They seem to work mostly in ER's, ICUs, supervision, or management. Is this the norm in most places? Even when we have male aides they seem to have a problem with the daily baths getting done on their assigned pts. Is it because they're embarassed bathing females? We have many more very elderly female pts than males here in Florida, but they usually don't care if a male bathes them and they seem to like having males care for them. Just curious.

I don't intentionally say I'm a nurse unless asked, but they usually realize it when I answer questions such as what surgeries I've had and I say something like "A chole, bilateral carpal tunnel x 2, and a low anterior bowel resection for rectal c-a, etc. It gets to be such a habit to speak "medicalease"....lol.

Being old, I will never understand tongue piercings. Do young people do it for shock value or what? I can imagine the odor when food gets stuck in it....yuck! I prefer a clean mouth, thank you.

>>> That's not easy to do when you have one aide and 40 pts on the floor with four to six nurses. Everyone want's the aide at once. Each nurse usually assigned the aide two pts for bath and bed, which still left us with five or six beds and baths plus the meds and txs. Our AVERAGE pt load was eight per nurse....plus admissions. I just can't understand why they WON'T hire more aides. Good aides can make a floor run well. :angryfire

Do you want to do pt care or be in the office? I've been doing home health part time for about a year and I love it. I worked 40 years in med-surg and finally retired from hospital nursing....and I will NEVER go back. I feel appreciated and respected much more now. I do both shifts and visits and the only negative is that if it's your only income, it's not always steady. For instance, my private-duty pt went into the hospital so I couldn't work and they don't always have a replacement pt. For me it's supplemental income to my social security so I just waited until he came home. Tomorrow will be my last day with him after 6 months because my hubby and I go to Canada for the summer. I'm going to miss both the pt and his family. They're always so thankful for anything you do. For the first time in years I feel like a REAL nurse giving EXCELLENT care!

I'm a hospital-retired LPN doing home health in St. Pete. Home health is so much less stressful. If anyone is looking for hospital work in Florida I would NOT recommend any HCA facilities.

In my hospital LPNs CAN'Tadmit, assess, spike blood, insert NG tubes, sign off orders, do care plans, give chemo, pronounce pts. LPNs CAN start and maintain IVs, give meds, take phone and verbal orders, push certain IV meds, maintain and give meds through central lines, and monitor and D/c blood. Over the years a lot changed and some of the tings we DID do, such as admits and care plans we can't do not....but we CAN do things we didn't used to be able to do. It's always changing. Not always for the better either. For awhile they wouldn't let us flush our central lines...until they clotted off because the RNs couldn't do them all.

Why? Nursing should not be gender bias in-favor of females. The white uniform & white nurses hat has the connotation of the female nurse.>>>> That's the silliest thing I ever heard. Male nurses wore all white and in place of a cap they put their stripe on their sleeve. This "politically incorrect" stuff is getting ridiculous.

>>> I agree. I worked hard for my cap and felt so professional in my white uniform. Now if a pt sees me they wonder if I'm housekeeping, dietary, or some other dept. My name and title are right on the whiteboard by their bed but they still don't know. The "youngsters" in nursing are the ones who changed it by refusing to wear caps because it :messed my hair up" or "got caught in the curtains." It became optional sometime in the 90's then started fading out. Now the nuses wear baggy hiphugger pants and short tops so you see their belly buttons and thong panties. No one says a thing about it either. Yes, I am an old bag....lol.

>>> You don't think women are more catty? I'm afraid I agree that they are. Have you ever sat with a group of women on break or at lunch? I feel that women definitely gossip more than men....myself included I'm afraid....which should be a

I really don't care what it looks like, I want my school's pin. As someone above mentioned, to me that is the whole point.>>>> I agree. Your school pin, no matter how ugly, represents the time you spent in YOUR nursing school and your pride at graduating. I still have my pin 40 years later, though I stopped wearing it when it went the way of nursing caps and white uniforms because I was afraid of losing it. I would also still love to be wearing my cap and white uniforms, but the "youngsters" coming out of nursing schools refused to wear them, so now I wear the colored tops just like dietary, housekeeping and other departments. They worried about the cap messing up their hair, or getting caught on a curtain....I thought of my cap with pride that I had the priviledge of qualifying to wear it. I don't feel quite so professional anymore....... especially when a pt asks me to "please send my nurse in" because they see me cleaning a toilet and think I'm their housekeeper. Oh well...... things change........

>>> I've been an LPN for 40 years. I don't EVER remember being treated badly or differently by RNs. I never felt disrespected by anyone and I respected the CNA's, secretaries, housekeeping, dietary and all other depts as much as I did my Rns. We're ALL there to do our jobs and we ALL need each other. Sure, I had disagreements with people but it had nothing to do with their position. Don't get discouraged. I also think going the LPN to RN route is the best way to become an RN. Good luck!

>>> That's the way we did "daily" procedures. The person who did it first put it on the MAR or Kardex with whatever time it was done and it was done at that time from then on. Worked well because ALL tx's were spread out a little more. :)

When has medical care in the states ever made sense? My husband is Canadian and can't believe how things are done here. No, the Canadian system isn't perfect, but at least EVERYONE has some kind of care. It's the same in Sweden. Yes, they have higher taxes also. Which is worse....higher taxes and medical coverage....or lower taxes and paying hundreds of dollars a month for insurance.......only for people that can afford it? My daughter pays $800 a month for herself and the kids....the law firm where her hubby works pays his part of $300. Can a person making minimum wage afford insurance? Besides costing more....benefits are being reduced. It's a sad state of affairs.

Thank you! I thought I was the ONLY nurse that remembered those days. It was really difficult for me to get in the habit of using gloves for anything else but cleaning up BM, which we didn't even HAVE back then!

I've seen them use gloves and STILL get stuck. Needles DO go right through gloves. For me, it was difficult feeling the veins through gloves on 80-90 yr olds. I always start with them on but have been known to get frustrated and remove them.

Believe it or not, back in the early 60's when I started as an aide, we didn't wear gloves and they weren't available in the rooms. It was considered an insult to the pt to do colostomy care and use gloves. Hard to believe isn't it? I think some go overboard with gloves though. I don't use them just to pull a pt up for dinner unless they have something contagious or draining fluids, but a lot of the aides do.

I retired and now do home health part time after being a hospital nurse for 40 years and I learned today how to use "The Vest" chest percussion machine that I had never seen before. I learned that no one is too old to learn!

>>> i think mucous bothers a lot of nurses more than blood or emesis. i'm doing private duty home health and have a pt with throat ca. after i give his breathing tx's he coughs up a lot. i think it's yucky because it just hangs there in slimy strings that never seem to stop...lol.

>>> it was the same where i worked. we didn't have to have an rn sign our notes. we did just about everything the rn did except spike blood and give iv push narcotics or heart medicines. i'm amazed at what so many lpns can't do in some places. i would feel like an aide.