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Well, after three months off, I finally dipped my toe back into the shark infested waters that is my hospice.
Got a call from the gal in charge of admissions, asking if I would be willing to do an admission over the weekend.
As it happens, I'm not making as much teaching for the online university as I did doing hospice triage, so a little income would be welcome. And I am supposed to work 16 hours a month to stay in the Per Diem pool, and hadn't worked at all since my last triage shift (which has been a well cherished vacation from the drama, I might add). So I said I was available Sunday from 12-4pm to do an admission.
Patient was still in the hospital on Friday, due to be discharged Sunday. I would do the hospice admission (which takes about 4 hours) when he got home. The triage nurse, L. (another colleauge of mine at the community college, who took over my spot when I quit) was to call me when he went home.
So, just before noon I get the call the patient is in the ambulance and on the way home. I call the son to set up a time for me to come over.
Son is upset that I'm not going to meet the ambulance at the house. The palliative care doctor told him that's what would happen.
So I apologize and smooth it over and set up a time. The AV itself actually went pretty well. It took me an hour and a half to explain our services, get a signed consent, and then do my physical assessment of the patient. The rest of the work I did at the office (took me about 3 hours, the paperwork is pretty intense).
Of course, I did run into some minor hitches.
For starters, they reset my password to the computer. 98% of what I have to do is on the computer. When I tried to login, I just thought I wasn't remembering my password right, so of course I locked myself out. So I call IT, who tells me, "Oh yeah, we heard you were coming back so we reset your password. It's now XXXXXXX."
Great. Why wasn't I told this BEFORE I locked myself out? I did tell AV Boss that I would need to get a computer. If they had locked me out of the system when I quit triage, and reset the password when I came back, didn't it occur to anyone to give me a call and let me know. Because, you know, I didn't actually resign . . . so my password should have been left alone.
Ditto for my voice mail.
Normally, I wouldn't give a hoot about my voice mail. 99% of the message are pure garbage, and go on and one for far too long. It's been one of my consistent complaints . . . the system is completely inefficient as a way of sharing information.
But when I do an AV, I have to leave voice mails on TWO different distribution lists: a general down and dirty one where I just say I admitted so and so, and a detailed list where I give a complete report of the visit for the primary care team who will follow up on Monday. That's actually pretty important.
IT says that since I'm Per Diem again, I don't get a voice mail box, so they deleted my old one.
I ended up having to send an email (at least they didn't disable my hospice email account) to the manager on duty so she could leave the voice mails for me.
They want me to do more AVs since they're getting slammed with admissions lately. That's good for me; fairly easy money. But they're going to have to give me my voice mail box back, Per Diem or no Per Diem if they want me to do these consistently.
It turned out that they'd completely forgotten I never actually resigned and was on the Per Diem pool. Boss Lady was talking to my pal J about how badly they needed people to do AVs, and they were trying to get regular staff to do OT. J just said to her, "Why don't you just call Panacea and ask her?"
Got a call from the gal in charge of admissions, asking if I would be willing to do an admission over the weekend.
As it happens, I'm not making as much teaching for the online university as I did doing hospice triage, so a little income would be welcome. And I am supposed to work 16 hours a month to stay in the Per Diem pool, and hadn't worked at all since my last triage shift (which has been a well cherished vacation from the drama, I might add). So I said I was available Sunday from 12-4pm to do an admission.
Patient was still in the hospital on Friday, due to be discharged Sunday. I would do the hospice admission (which takes about 4 hours) when he got home. The triage nurse, L. (another colleauge of mine at the community college, who took over my spot when I quit) was to call me when he went home.
So, just before noon I get the call the patient is in the ambulance and on the way home. I call the son to set up a time for me to come over.
Son is upset that I'm not going to meet the ambulance at the house. The palliative care doctor told him that's what would happen.
So I apologize and smooth it over and set up a time. The AV itself actually went pretty well. It took me an hour and a half to explain our services, get a signed consent, and then do my physical assessment of the patient. The rest of the work I did at the office (took me about 3 hours, the paperwork is pretty intense).
Of course, I did run into some minor hitches.
For starters, they reset my password to the computer. 98% of what I have to do is on the computer. When I tried to login, I just thought I wasn't remembering my password right, so of course I locked myself out. So I call IT, who tells me, "Oh yeah, we heard you were coming back so we reset your password. It's now XXXXXXX."
Great. Why wasn't I told this BEFORE I locked myself out? I did tell AV Boss that I would need to get a computer. If they had locked me out of the system when I quit triage, and reset the password when I came back, didn't it occur to anyone to give me a call and let me know. Because, you know, I didn't actually resign . . . so my password should have been left alone.Ditto for my voice mail.
Normally, I wouldn't give a hoot about my voice mail. 99% of the message are pure garbage, and go on and one for far too long. It's been one of my consistent complaints . . . the system is completely inefficient as a way of sharing information.
But when I do an AV, I have to leave voice mails on TWO different distribution lists: a general down and dirty one where I just say I admitted so and so, and a detailed list where I give a complete report of the visit for the primary care team who will follow up on Monday. That's actually pretty important.
IT says that since I'm Per Diem again, I don't get a voice mail box, so they deleted my old one.
I ended up having to send an email (at least they didn't disable my hospice email account) to the manager on duty so she could leave the voice mails for me.
They want me to do more AVs since they're getting slammed with admissions lately. That's good for me; fairly easy money. But they're going to have to give me my voice mail box back, Per Diem or no Per Diem if they want me to do these consistently.
It turned out that they'd completely forgotten I never actually resigned and was on the Per Diem pool. Boss Lady was talking to my pal J about how badly they needed people to do AVs, and they were trying to get regular staff to do OT. J just said to her, "Why don't you just call Panacea and ask her?"