Does home health nursing get better or is my job just cooked? Or am I just not cut out for it?
Hey there, RN for 5 1/2 years in the US. Worked mostly acute care. In the beginning of this year I switched to home health nursing. At first, it seemed great. 5-6 patients per day, mostly wound care, teaching, that kind of thing. Of course there's the start of cares with the oasis questions and all that but I got used to it. Always managed to get my lunch. Sometimes I'd be done early and get to do some grocery shopping. It genuinely felt like a great job.
Well, we've been bought by a very large company. Now it just feels like we're chasing numbers and everything went to shit.
Every day is 6 patients, maybe 7. They tried to schedule 11 patients to a physical therapist a little while ago. One of our branches in another city for my company apparently had a mass quitting from the nurses.
We're moving from salary to hourly. Unsure how that's going to get yet.
I feel like I'm tired of this job. I go home, often late, and I feel like all I do is chart. My weekends are shadowed with the thought in the back of my head "I need to chart. I need to check my email. I need to sign up for this learning module thing, I need to follow up on this order, I need to submit my wound photos, or documents." The on-call feels ridiculous. It used to be two week days and two weekend days required. Now, it's five week days and two weekend days required.
Idk. I'm tired. I'm never not thinking about work. Constant emails. Texts from patients (wtf, I always tell them to call our agency, not me! They think I'm their personal nurse). Overbearing family. Always some fire to put out. Always something that needs to be turned in. I got a call from a doctor a few weeks ago at 6AM on Sunday to give me approval for an order request made on Thursday. Wtf? I was out today trying to enjoy my Sunday and a patient texted me, and for some reason it just ruined my little outing. Took me out of my relaxed headspace and right back to work. Sounds stupid, I know, but that's how I felt.
Well, I suppose this was more of a rant. But to my other home health nurses (or former)
How do you deal? Is this just the norm? Maybe I'm just not cut out for this job. It feels like the kind of nurse they want is one of those "nursing is my calling😇" types, which, well, I am not. Sorry.
Follow up question, what other kind of nursing jobs might my (brief) home health experience open up for me, if anything? If I quit I'll consider going back to bedside, but maybe there's an alternative to that.
Posted Dec 7, 2025, 11:53 PM UTC