wordsmith

Trying not to be picky, but it's not "HIPPA", it's HIPAA, for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Thanks.

I posted this eight years ago (!): Nov 27, '09 by wordsmith, ADN, RN I worked for a doctor-owned facility that was bought out by Davita. There were lots of processes and policies that Davita put in place. OMG...Everyone from Davita was really nice a...

Socialist medicine is good, to a point. The problem is where people have to wait for long periods of time for routine surgeries. Or when the "system" decides that when you're over a certain age, procedures and medications aren't going to be part of y...

Uh, yeah, it IS that expensive, if you're working crazy hours and/or in an area where there is no physical nursing school campus. One of the on-line outfits charges about $2500 per class. I started taking the BSN classes and after $10,000 I decided t...

Sure they are...found in any dialysis center near you :) or any hospital that provides inpatient dialysis services. With the aging of the population, and more and more people getting hypertension and diabetes (top two causes of end stage renal diseas...

Tommy, I work for a disabled and senior services agency as part of state government and I absolutely LOVE this job. It's almost all paperwork. I also see clients in nursing facilities and try to get them placed in assisted living facilities, foster h...

Over $5/hr. I was amazed at the increase. They took into account my total years of nursing, not just dialysis experience.

I just got hired by Fresenius. I've been working for Davita and can't believe how much better Fresenius pays. To be fair, I'm moving from one area where there's little competition to an area where there's more competition, but the increase in pay was...

and telling me training will be at this clinic but also another one and possibly one out of state for a few weeks. Is this the norm for Davita? .There are two clinics in our area and we swap personnel back and forth sometimes. When nurses and PCTs tr...

I hope this is encouraging--it's meant to be. My 30-yr-old son just got his BSN and was hired shortly after that at the hospital where he did his practicum. He treated the practicum like a long-running job interview and it worked for him. When I got ...

Then the previous suggestions people have made apply--pharmacy, doctor's office, family or friend to do for the patient or assist the patient in filling the box. For sight impaired, same thing, or as the Braille-using person suggested, a Dymo labeler...

Hi--I hope after a couple months you're a little more accustomed to the chairside Snappy. It's slow (it was part of the Gambro system and DaVita incorporated it into Snappy) and somewhat redundant with all the password stuff, but you do get used to i...

As above, liability issues, time issues...check with your clinical service specialist and nursing board to see if it's dispensing. Yikes. I sure wouldn't do it, FA or no. I think my CSS wouldn't go along with it, either. Also, that's what home health...

Funny how things vary. We always do bevel up, are not supposed to flip needles, but occasionally have to depending on the patient's access. We do use lidocaine by request on accesses; I understand that many clinics don't. I never heard of Tums on an ...

Anywhere from 8-12 hours depending on the schedule.

From what I've seen, the docs consider the CVCs semipermanent or permanent when there have been multiple failures of the AVF or AVG. The failures are usually clotting that doesn't respond to drug therapy like Plavix (AVGs or AVFs), or AVFs that do no...

I totally get where you're coming from, and I sympathize. When I was in nursing school in the early 1990s and doing the OB rotation, the four guys in the rotation weren't allowed to help with the birthing or exam process unless the doctor was there, ...

I worked for a doctor-owned facility that was bought out by Davita. There were lots of processes and policies that Davita put in place. OMG...Everyone from Davita was really nice and helped us get this stuff going, but just getting used to it all, ho...

This isn't a straight answer to your question, but it might be time for a family conference with the doctor and social worker at the dialysis unit with a review of the patient's comorbidities, and then the same kind of meeting to include the patient ...

Like many of the posters here, I've traded off with my colleagues whenever possible when a patient has requested a nurse or CNA of the same gender. However, if staff are of one gender (say, all female) and there's a male patient who doesn't want a fe...

I've been working at a lovely, smallish (okay, we have 150 pts, but they're like family) unit, plus the doctors' office nearby. Because of all the changes down on us by CMS/Medicare, the only way we'll survive, they tell us, is if we get sold, either...

The clinic is in the Pacific Northwest. So far we haven't heard yet...Our current management team of doctors matches up to 3% of 401(k) contributions. The health insurance deductible is pretty high but they will reimburse part of that. There is a hig...

We're supposed to find out in the next several days. Our docs want a partnership so they still have some say in how things are run. We'll see how that works out. Our manager, who was promoted from the floor and who is well-liked, is trying to get us ...

Urk. Fresenius was one of the suits that came and looked at us. DaVita was one of the others. There were two or three more. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It's not my decision, unfortunately As I said in my original post, the reason the docs are g...

Thanks for letting me know. I'm not worried, I think the benefits will be better, with more employees in a large corporation = more buying power, but some people are getting kinda distressed. Knowing it was a smooth changeover helps.