Know When to Call It a Day

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Some days in home health are MESSY.  There’s no other way to put it.  You have a patient in the middle of the day cancel, your first asks to be seen later in the day, and your clinical manager hasn’t processed their work flow, so that patient you planned on seeing is no longer feasible.  There went that day’s schedule.  Oh, and to top it all off, a patient’s family is calling you incessantly to ask you about each piece of equipment that they think might help.  “No, I actually don’t think the hiking stick will suffice for your balance impaired husband, Mrs. Jones.”  Mulligan anyone?

Whenever I’m having a day like the one I described above, experience has taught me to recognize that this is “one of THOSE days.”  If we in a hospital or outpatient setting and our schedule fell apart we might be in trouble, BUT since we work in home health; the moment you recognize that your day’s schedule has fallen apart you can call a spontaneous beach day.  It’s either that or suffer through hours more of attempting to glue together the pieces of your smashed to bits day.  Scheduling is tough.  It’s probably the toughest part of our job. Sitting and sweating in a hot car, in July, calling patients who will probably be annoyed at the “audacity” of you calling to see them in the next 30 minutes can get old quick. 

I prefer to recognize when fortune and the gods have turned on me, and reschedule my remaining standout patient for a less cursed occasion and call it a day.  The freedom to make choices like this is liberating beyond belief, especially knowing that I won’t suffer any consequences and will instead have a fun time doing the things that energize me.  Besides, in home health we often earn twice what we would in other settings.  I literally doubled my earning power in a 8 hour day when I switched to home health.  Some days you can even make twice the money in half the time.  Point of the day: don’t sweat the small stuff!