HHheart

Thanks for the response. I've been a RN for longer than I care to admit, LOL! I emailed Frontier but got no response. Apparently I'm not worth their time until I have the BSN in hand.

Did you bring that to the doc's attention (no K+ replacement / labs)?? Did they insist on it anyway?

I hope things are better for you in your new job. Sorry you had such a bad experience. Sounds like that agency needs to hire some real home health managers. I've seen the fallout before when an agency tries to hire management from other genres of nursing - it's almost always a miserable disaster. I just don't see how anyone that has not done hands-on home care can possibly have the knowledge and insight to manage something as complex as a HH agency! Best of luck in your new venture!

I like Caliotter's post about conduit for the tubing - I once had a patient accidentally drag her tubing across the warming plate on her coffee pot and you can guess what happened! ....Please be careful!

I hire the nurses that work in our home health agency. My early days in nursing were spent in a teeny tiny little rural hospital where the nurses did everything from ED to ICU to dumping the trash. We learned it all, did it all. I have always felt that my time in that little hospital molded me into a nurse that can roll with the punches, and is willing to lend a hand anywhere that I am needed. As a home health director, I have to look for nurses with a nice variety of skill sets. I don't always find this in nurses from large institutions. Generally speaking, many of them have no IV or venipuncture skills because in the big facilities, this is done by others. I don't qualify or disqualify anyone based on where they worked in the past, though. I just wanted to chime in on why small-hospital nurses deserve as much consideration as any others. :)

I will finish my BSN this summer (from WGU) and would like to continue on toward CNM through Frontier without a hiccup. Do I have to wait until I have my BSN "in hand", or can I begin the application process before then? Any help is appreciated!

Hmmm.... makes me wonder if you're using the same software my office is using.

I am the director of a moderately sized home health agency in Florida. We (myself and 2 of the companies VPs) shopped electronic/point of care devices for 2 years. We looked at literally everything out there. I can firmly say that Mckesson, Delta, Homecare Homebase, Carecentric, PCTC, Mysis and HealthWyse are all lousy. The latter is the one we got stuck with (it wasn't our first choice, but due to time constraints we had to go with them), and it has been nothing but headaches since. The one that was our first choice (Careanyware) bears looking at - it's a web-based solution which I feel is a plus. Regardless of what you go with - stay away from the palm pilots - BAD solution. Reliability is atrocious. We started out with them and have ended up replacing ALL of them with touch-screen tablets. Sheeesh what a lesson this has been! Best of luck to you in your endeavors!

Well, there's more to my leaving than the software issue - that was just the last straw. This particular position has never been a good one, and I had hoped that going paperless would ease some of the pain, but it didn't. I wouldn't stay even if we were using paper or went to CA at this point. Just too many problems, in general! However, I feel that in a well managed agency, electronic documentation is the only way to go. Best of luck and let me know how you fare!

Best of luck to you in your search! We looked at Cerner, Mysis, McKesson, Delta, Homecare Homebase, Carecentric, just to name a few. I don't have much info on the data storage issue - I'm more on the clinical side than the IT side. Actually, I just submitted my resignation with this agency - and I would have to say that it is at least in part, due to the ongoing software aggravation! We had hoped that going "paperless" would lessen the workload, but in reality, it has increased - at least for our agency. Be careful of vendors that sell you everything piece-meal - it can get very expensive.

From someone that has spent the past 2 1/2 yrs evaluating software for our agency - I can tell you that none of them are perfect. They all have their shortcomings, it's just a matter of what features are most important to your agency. We are currently using Healthwyse which has turned out to be a nightmare. It promotes some of the worst documentation I've ever seen, and frustrates our clinicians because of synching issues and down times with their devices. We almost went with a web-based product instead, (which was MY first choice, but the powers that be couldn't agree on a contract). Take a look at CareAnyware - Web based is going to be the future of all healthcare documentation anyway, as we move closer to a National Health Record. If you want more info, just let me know. Good luck in your search!

Thank you both so much!

I would really appreciate it if someone could find it in their heart to help me out with a class assignment! I need to interview a NP - I will post the questions here in case anyone feels up to it! Interview Protocol 1. Discuss how you utilize and value the knowledge of other disciplines to solve patient care problems. What team members are you most often engaged with, and what is the unique expertise of each? 2. Describe how you demonstrate appropriate teambuilding and collaborative strategies when working with interprofessional teams. 3. How do you see care applied within your particular nursing practice situation? 4. Describe the roles of different nurses (e.g., clinical nurse specialist, nurse executive, bedside nurse) in promoting safe and quality outcomes of care for diverse populations. 5. Describe how you apply quality improvement processes to implement patient safety initiatives and monitor outcomes. How are nurse-sensitive indicators monitored in your institution? 6. Describe how nurses facilitate patient-centered care in your institution and practice. How are patient-centered care and advocacy similar to and different from each other? 7. Describe a situation in your practice in which you could see that the principles of ethics, professional nursing standards, altruism, and human dignity affected your nursing practice or a specific outcome. 8. Describe a patient care initiative in your organization that improved outcomes and enhanced cost effectiveness in care delivery. 9. Describe how nursing research has improved or changed a particular aspect of patient care in your institution. How is the research project different from quality improvement activities? 10. Describe how information technology and patient data are used in your institution for ethical, effective clinical decision making and how patient confidentiality is protected. 11. Describe a particular situation in which you have been involved with the roles and responsibilities of a major healthcare regulatory agency that affected patient care quality, workplace safety, healthcare reimbursement, or the scope of nursing practice. 12. Compare nursing practice roles for the registered nurse, clinical nurse leader, advanced practice registered nurse, and clinical nurse specialist in your clinical setting. Describe specific differences in their duties, knowledge, and abilities.

That makes no sense at all. Each commercial insurance company has differing criteria. I'll bet he was a fairly new surveyor - sometimes you have to remind them that commercial insurance is a different animal.

You will have better luck if you look at regular dress patterns for that era. Find something similar and she should be able to reproduce it in white. If she can't make minor adjustments (belt, collar, etc.,), you need to find another dressmaker. (I was a dressmaker loooooong before I became a nurse! LOL). Best of luck to you