Traveler

I hope someone here can give me a little guidance. I have been offered a job to do some part time cm. This is for patients in a relatively large geographic area who would be receiving services in the home instead of a nursing home. I would help to co...

Also be very careful before you assign these patients as having "psych components" to their conditions. If you had pain so severe that even a gentle breeze blowing could send you into screams of agony yet many people dismissed your pain and no medica...

I am interested in hearing from those in the field which case management certification I should look into obtaining. I did a quick search on the Internet and see that there are several out there. Which one is considered the industry standard? I have ...

I don't think that every RN who has excellent clinical and assessment skills makes a good DON but I do think that every DON should have some experience out on the floor and needs to have good clinical and assessment skills. In LTC there are usually n...

Patient acuity seems to be increasing. I have done per visit and salary and would prefer hourly then per visit and then salary. I have had WoundVac visits take several hours, complicated IV visits take 3 or 4 hours, completely overwhelmed family memb...

After doing home health for six years for two different agencies I just turned in my 30 day notice last Friday with mixed feelings. I am burned out and I don't want my patient care to suffer, ever, because of it. I have always taken excellent care of...

It sounds like the norm in hh to have messed up paychecks. When I started with the company I'm with now 2 years ago I was paid per visit. Should be pretty simple to figure out right? Not, the checks never matched but I knew about what the amount shou...

I have been with my present agency for 2 years and have almost 6 years in hh. The field nurses are salary and we also are the case managers for our load of about 25 patients. The cm takes additional time, but we are still expected to get 25 points/we...

I live in East Tennessee, but spent about a month at Vanderbilt with my 11 year old daughter this spring. Obviously we were not in the NICU and I can't speak as a staff member, but as a parent. The facility is beautiful- one of the nicest hospitals I...

I have been doing home health for almost 6 years now and still love it although I too experience some of the drawbacks that you were talking about. It is hard to separate work from home, especially if you take call. We take call one full week out of ...

It is hard to double up on classes, but I did do it with some of my BSN classes with UoP. I always participated in the teamwork and was usually one of the two on the team that did most of the work- very frustrating. It was difficult to double and I d...

I finished my BSN in March of this year and it is a hard program. I overlapped classes for about the last 6 months of the program and actually finished while staying in the hospital while my daughter was very sick. It was tough, but I wouldn't have b...

This is one that means a great deal to me. My daughter had several sore throats on and off until Feb.11 of this year when her voice was gone and the pain was severe. The doctor noticed a goiter to she had u/s that showed the r lobe was larger. All ot...

How much of your time is one the road and how much work do the cm's for Genex usually do at home? Are there regional meetings, etc? Does Genex compensate for home office expenses?

I truly understand what both sides are saying. I have been into more than one pt's home who were using marijuana for medicinal reasons- both had end stage cancer. They always put it away when I came and, even though I knew what they were doing and th...

I thought Florida was one of the more restrictive states about scripts, etc.

I don't think you were out of line for reporting it. I believe more from the perspective of legally protecting yourself. If there is an illegal drug at a patient's home, you don't need to be in there period. I was at a patient's house once who was kn...

Have all of the changes in abbreviations sent anyone else over the edge? In the "old days" we took a whole class on all of these crazy abbreviations, finally got used to them, and now we can't use half of them. I am finding it's a very hard habit to ...

Health benefits just depends upon your needs. There are lots of plans you can purchase for your family if there is nobody with pre-existing conditions. BCBS, Humana, etc. There are many. HSA's are a pretty good option now. As far as number of shits b...

Relax! Don't set yourself up for failure before even taking the test. You said you just graduated and so you should be well prepared. The schools are in business to prepare their graduates well to sit and pass the test- high pass rates make them look...

Have all of the changes in abbreviations sent anyone else over the edge? In the "old days" we took a whole class on all of these crazy abbreviations, finally got used to them, and now we can't use half of them. I am finding it's a very hard habit to ...

If you are on call you may be seeing patients any day of the week and any time of the day or night. Depending upon the agency's coverage area, it may be a patient you have never seen before and may be very far away. It is not unusal for me to drive 2...

If you itemize deductions, it comes under schedule A misc. ded. (anything above 2% of AGI). You can deduct anything used for work. My hha doesn't supply tympanic thermometer covers so I buy those, nursing license fee, journal fee, professional organi...

A cell phone is really a lifeline in hh. If you are taking call you really have to have one. This is even necessary where we are- in about 75% of the area we cover there is no cell service (rural), but they can leave messages when I'm out of the area...

There are some great threads about this that have been discussed before. Of course safety is always something that you need to be vigilant about in hh. You are going into stranger's homes and you can be out all hours all by yourself. Look back at som...