Taking work home

[achot chavi]

Do you take work home with you?

Our DON encourages it- short of taking home patient files. Of course the work is done on your own time and not on the clock. When Unit Managers go on vacation, she encourages them to do employee evaluations "at home, while your head is clear"... I am against, but as her ADON, dont open my mouth, I simply stay late on the clock to finish my work and refuse to take it home.

What do you think?

[noc4senuf]

At times I do take it home with me. Right now I am looking at the annual budget and will probably do it over this weekend.

[DPRN]

I create the schedule at home and then email it to me at work. I can not create a schedule with all the interruptions at work. The only other thing I do at home is create forms that would make something easier at work.

[MERRYWIDOW46]

When I was the Quality Improvement Coordinator, I was told by my DON when I came in with a respiratory virus, "Go home and work there". NICE, if I'm too sick to be at work I am too sick to work!

[expltcrn]

It is indeed challenging to try NOT to bring work home when you are an LTC Manager or someone who is non-floor as one of you mentioned. Unfortunately, I am one of those who DO take work home whether or not I planned to do it. However, whenever I was the DON or Manager, and I requested my right hand person to do some tasks for me, I either compensate them for the time they did it (regardless of where they did it, such as employee evaluations), or let them exchange the time off for the time spent type arrangement.

The fact that we in LTC Management still in general take work home (Aside from my personal experience, I have numerous DON friends, whose husbands complain of the same thing), is a symptom of poorly funded eldercare resulting in budget cuts, resulting in cuts in facility budgets and positions, resulting in high Nurse Manager/Director burnout, resulting in high nursing turnover and VIOLA - Nurse Management/Assistants wearing too many hats working longer hours, 8 days out of 7, and being on call 24/7, while having to come in with a "let's get it done" smile every day! Oh and covering the floor when someone calls out and there is no one else to pass the meds.

The DON or the ADON, who happens to also be the QA Nurse, the DSD, the Infection Control Nurse, the Risk Manager Nurse, the Case Manager/Admission Nurse/Discharge Planner, Care Plan Coordinator, Wound Nurse - Tell me that doesn't describe you? (or a variation thereof). It's the residents who keep us coming back, huh?