What was your orientation like?

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Specializes in Functional Medicine, Holistic Nutrition.

Hello all- I'm a nurse educator for a large home care and hospice agency. We are redesigning our orientation and I would like some feedback. What was good about your orientation for home health? What was not so good? What did classtime (if you had it) consist of (topics, specific classes, length of classes, etc)? How did you learn the computer system (was it a class, did you learn it in the field, etc.)? How did you learn the OASIS? Does your orientation have a dedicated field teacher that does not carry a case load? How was your field teacher used to assist in your orientation? Any feedback would be very helpful! Thank you!

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Typical orientation: My last case is a hospice case where the hospice nurse is from another agency. "Call the hospice nurse". When I looked for the contact number, no contact number in the field chart. Called the agency, their response, "Ask the family". Like I said, this is typical.

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Specializes in COS-C, Risk Management.

Orientation? There was an orientation?

Seriously, the best orientation I had was from the McHealth company (ya'll know who I'm talking about), which consisted entirely of computer-based modules (everything you need to know about home health you can learn from the CBTs) and one ride along with the director of nursing, who botched the whole process. At least I had the CBTs. No personal training with OASIS whatsoever, just "pay attention to the CBTs," of which there were hours and hours and hours. Just ridiculous.

My dream is to someday be the education coordinator for a home health agency. I could seriously get into that.

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Specializes in WOC, Hospice, Home Health.

Out of the norm here but for experienced nurses: 2 weeks classroom to learn OASIS/ policies/ computer, 4 weeks with a preceptor. 3 months probation.

I came in as a new grad so I got 2 weeks classroom, 8 weeks preceptor, 6 months probation

We have 2 full time inservice/ education gals

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Peds, Neuro, L&D, Home Health.

My first home health job I had 2 days with my manager. The first we reviewed a few charts and OASIS documents, the next day she rode with me and watched me do my first visits, and that was really all the "orientation" I got. I was so overwhelmed and confused, it's a wonder I'm still in homecare at all!

Luckily, I found a company (Gentiva) with much better and more thorough orientation, and I've been with them ever since. We had 1 week in a classroom with an instructor, then several weeks with a field nurse. I've since gotten to help provide training to other nurses, and my main goal is to give them a more solid foundation than I had. Makes all the difference in the world!!!

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