missangela

That's funny I have been wondering the same thing. I'm a new RN (less than 2 years experience) and all I've done is home health and hospice. I get a lot of crap from older nurses for not doing any hospital / acute care (which seems to be the staple of getting hired anywhere else). So I do tend to go back and forth in my mind if I'm doing the right thing. I'm a full time salaried RN for a dual hospice/home health. Pro's I've had: -I honestly like the freedom of scheduling your own day and the ability to give really good care one pt at a time. -I'm expected to see 4-5 pts per day, or less if it's very far. Pretty much anything I can cram in my 8 hour salary time. Which is reasonable. -I get a musical soundtrack between patient visits (radio or pandora). -You can youtube procedures before you go into a patient home. -Easy to run a quick errand between visits which is nice. Especially my Starbucks runs. -It's interesting and sometimes fun going into different peoples homes (in my opinion). I'm in LA so I can be in Beverly Hills mansions, Beach houses or straight up in the ghetto (lol). It varies day to day. -I'm with a stable home health agency that's been in the game for at least a decade and always has >150 pt census at any given time with solid contacts. (Ideally try to find a dependable agency based on years of operation, the average length of stay of the staff and their happiness. -I get salary, benefits and mileage reimbursement. Which can add up $$ Con's I've had: -I'm in LA/OC area so I do sit in some of the worse traffic you'll ever experience. -I'm on my ass A LOT. So I walk 30-45 mins at least 5 days/wk to prevent DVT. I'm dead serious, I'm afraid of getting DVT or getting jello legs. -I feel pretty much trapped with my honda civic hybrid. Fuel efficiency is a must to survive in this field. I do see some of my other RN school friends who are in ER driving BMW's and Lexus's which is nice (not a necessity though!) -If you do on call, it's extremely easy to get burnt out. Some agencies force you to do rotating on call if you want the full time position with benefits. -I have to furnish my own assessment supplies: BP Cuff, pulse ox, stethoscope, thermometer and other things that comply with bag technique. I keep a surplus of spare supplies, admit packets. I made my own office with drawers & all in the trunk of my car. (That may vary with different agencies.) -CHARTING IS THE DEVIL. Oasis-C is a 22 page ***** that almost all the time, runs me wayyy after hours on my own time off. Gets pretty overwhelming. I guess it really depends on you and what will make you happy in the long run. I like what I've been doing so far. :)

I've seen it done a lot all over Southern California since there are so many hospices. If you're Per Diem it shouldn't be an issue. If they want you exclusively as their nurse they should offer you full time. You are not marketing to these patients and you should make that clear that you're interested in the experience and patient care aspect only. Just be cautious. Once you get another job, in the event that a pt is unhappy with their service, notify your supervisor so that it doesn't seem like you'll steal the patient away (which is the biggest fear of the companies). I've had patients mysteriously transfer to another hospice agency that another co-worker happened to work at (not a good look).

i bought the 5th edition saunders and it's definitely worth it so go get it! i actually failed my boards last month in november & i had no idea the newer edition was released the month before. so i bought it immediately when i heard it existed and right away i saw questions similar to those that i had on the new nclex. new changes: - on top of the "pyramid points" they added "pyramid alerts"... really important points/hints written in red font all over the book because they're typically tested on in nclex (and i can vouch for that ). they remind me of hesi hints (if you ever read the hesi book). - they added sound / video / audio q's on the cd... which i did encounter on the test. - "priority nursing actions" which are basically like the re-order & sata questions on nclex... and i kid you not, it had one of my re-order questions almost exactly like i had it on my nclex. i will say some of my classmates passed using the older 4th edition, but i wasn't so lucky. i will say that many practice questions are repeated in this book. but they did add & change up a lot of them. arguably, you don't "need it", but i would play it safe and stay updated... i mean, coming from someone who didn't pass. haha good luck! =)

I waited to get into rcc's adn program for almost 2 years, so I went to everest in ontario instead. I'm about to graduate and some of my friends barely got in to RCC this spring.