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From Hospital to Homecare - One Nurses Story

I am a med/ surg RN who worked in the hospital setting for years. I always loved the fast paced environment of the hospital. Taking care of 5-7 patients at a time was typical, and made the day shift I was working go quickly. When I worked nights I had 15-16 patients which was extremely draining. I always thought that homecare was simple patient education in the home, and that I would be in and out of the home in one hour and would have to see multiple patients in one day. Essentially I thought all homecare fit the “visiting nurse” model. I honestly didn’t realize that I could work a full 8 to 12 hour shift with one patient in his or her home.

At a job fair one year ago I met some people from Newborn Nurses. They told me what it was like to be a homecare nurse. They explained that I could work just a couple shifts a month to make some extra money, or I could work 40 hours a week if I was interested in something full time. Plus, there is no holiday/weekend requirement! For someone who has always had to work a couple of holidays a year, they had my attention. I was still a little apprehensive because I never worked with chronically ill children before. They explained that they actually have a number of adult patients on service for private duty nursing. In fact they had a patient in her 50’s who has 3 shifts available per month about twenty minutes from my house! I decided to give homecare a try. I began working with this patient and found that working with a patient one on one was remarkably rewarding. The patient appreciated everything I did for her and I had time to do all the little extras. I really enjoy the flexible schedule as well.

Newborn Nurses started calling me and offering me other cases in my area. They had more adult cases, but they also had a new case opening - an adolescent case 10 minutes from my house. I never thought I would want to work with a 15 year old as a nurse, but I wanted to learn new skills. The case that was opening had a day shift available and the nurse who takes those shifts would actually be with the child in school all day. The instructors at Newborn Nurses spent a great deal of time with me going over how to do a very thorough adolescent assessment, and the clinical skills needed to care for trached and ventilator dependant patient. I left my job at the hospital and have been working full time with the 16 year old patient for 6 months. I LOVE IT!! It is the first time in my life I actually think my job is fun. The rewards of enabling this child to go to school everyday are profound.

Learn more about Newborn Nurses

Providing RN/LPN Shift Care In the Patients Home For Newborns, Pediatrics, Adolescents & Adults.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 9:05 am and is filed under Newborn Nurses, Uncategorized. The entry is tagged under homecare, newborn, Newborn Nurses, nursing jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.