The care of wounds, ostomies and continence care

 The care of wounds, ostomies and continence care is a special calling. Many patients will not discuss such personal issues with just any healthcare team member. So, in addition to providing physical care, there are also emotional issues for these patients. Numerous areas of patient care utilize hyperbaric therapy including patients receiving Wound Care treatment. Join us as we discuss indications, contraindications, side effects, and treatment protocols as they relate to Wound and Hyperbaric Nursing care.

MDS (or minimum data set) nurses

 MDS (or minimum data set) nurses work in long-term care facilities where they assess and monitor patient health and well-being in accordance with federal guidelines. While most MDS nurses are registered nurses (RNs), they specialize in collecting patient data and compiling this information into reports for further research and assessment.

An MDS nurse is the nurse in the long term care facility who schedules and completes the RAI-Resident Assessment Instrument, a detailed assessment done at least quarterly on every nursing home resident. The MDS nurse is also usually responsible to coordinate the completion of the care plans for the resident based on the results of the assessment. There is much more to it, but that's it in a nutshell.

You would be collecting data from a whole bunch of sources; ie: nurses, aides, resident, families, Dr. progress notes, therapy notes, etc, etc. Then you would complete the paper/computer MDS form based on your complete assessment (using the data collected). A RUG score (or resource utilization grouper) score is generated based upon your answers and that is used to determine medicare/medicaide reimbursement rates for the facility. The MDS is used to create the careplan, determines reimbursement rates and determines quality measures/indicators per federal standards. State surveyors pull these reports prior to inspection visits and already knows who is losing weight, who has pressure ulcers, etc.

. Can be a difficult job to really learn

 (so many rules and every one expects so much from the results) and from my experience, you either love it or hate it.

You may want to check out the geriatric forum. There is a sub-forum there just for MDS nurses with lots of info available. 

I did this for about 5 years. We also had to take "call" where we would have to cover the hall nurses if they called in sick. We also had to do various other, non MDS related, task like scheduling. Other than that nascar nurse explained it really well. It is a very important job in the LTC facility as you are responsible for all payment from medicare/medicaid. Although, management usually doesn't understand this.