MH2206

Hi to all, I've been working at an outpatient clinic in a rural area for a few months now. This is a great position and I enjoy the base population I work with, but there have been a few unforeseen duties I didn't expect to encounter. First, I've been asked to travel away from our clinic (about 45 miles) to a nursing home to perform med consults on about 10-12 consumers close to once or twice per month. This has been great experience, but the population is much more acute with significant medical comorbid conditions. The decision making process is much more difficult than the outpatient population I work with and was not addressed in the contract. The nursing home has also asked me to prescribe and slightly pressured me to "be available" when they need to fax a refill request. This is a bit worrisome from a legal standpoint as I don't know if the policy covering our agency will cover for services rendered to a different agency. Second, the initial agreement was that there would be no on-call. Since starting, I've received several phone calls from the on-call crisis line, staffed by our LCSW's, with med questions. Our initial agreement was to work 40 hours Tuesday through Friday. I typically use Monday as a "catch up" day and don't mind these calls during that time. However, they have been calling more on Saturday and Sunday evenings with questions and prescription requests I don't feel comfortable giving without seeing the individual in person. Would this be considered "on-call" or just something that is to be expected with the position? The reason I bring this up is because I'm wondering if I should request to be better compensated. I don't mind these tasks, but was a bit thrown off when considering what my base contract was agreed upon and what I am actually doing. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!