Thinking about hospice nursing

chopwood carrywater · Jul 22, 2016

How long is the orientation. What will your caseload be. What is the on call requirement. What is the geographical area you will be covering. How well does the current hospice team work and get along together.

There are other things but I hope this gives you some ideas.

simbawicz · Jul 24, 2016

How long is the orientation. What will your caseload be. What is the on call requirement. What is the geographical area you will be covering. How well does the current hospice team work and get along together.
There are other things but I hope this gives you some ideas.

What she said, plus, how do you document? Salaried or hourly? How often are you expected to be in the office? How frequent is IDG/ITM (if you are case managing)? Are you given a mentor?

RoseK4020 · Sep 25, 2016

Ask to shadow an RN Case Manager. Ask her how many hours she spends documenting at home after she sees her patients. What is her typical caseload?

nutella, MSN, RN · Sep 27, 2016

Literally the most important question in home hospice is :

- what is the productivity? I found that 5 visits/day is ok but everything that is above it is rough unless you also have nursing home visits.

- Who does admissions?? Those are the ones that take forever with all the documentation and should really count for at least 2 visits.

- Will you see patients in facilities? I wonder if that is the reason they reached out - because you have LTC experience. I did not mind facilities longterm and AL plus the occasional GIP in the hospital at all because if you have several patients , your have less travel - disadvantage is that the admissions tend to be longer.

Ask about their turnover, mileage, orientation, on call coverage, and so on.

I loved working in home hospice - but the problem is that the company burned us nurses out by expecting more visits than 5/day with endless documentation.