Week 12

This was my last real week at FHCA. It was a great experience and I am happy that I decided to take it. Nothing really exciting happened at work. I just helped out with a few random projects. I finished my hours on Wednesday. I will go in on Monday and should be offered a part-time job for spring.

Week 11

I am working on yet another impossible project. It is a little frustrating but I will do what I have to. They are still not sure if I will get hired part time for the spring while I get my Masters. I really hope they do but they don't seem to be having a lot for me to do so i will understand if they don't. I just wish there were more things I could do there. I am currently trying to find any stimulus money available for plant repairs or generator improvements. I have looked every where but they keep giving me things that are not possible so it makes me look like a bad worker and that is a little disappointing. I wish they would give me a project that I could accomplish. Next week is my last week, unless I work on Monday the week of thanksgiving. We will see how things end. It was still a good experience if nothing more comes out of it.

10th Week

I spent most of my time at work just listening and learning this week, not doing any work. I sat through a committee meeting at the capitol and we had a long meeting about our strategic plan. My boss left the office for meetings all week on Tuesday. I have been in contact with her via email and I have been working on finding information about available stimulus money and information about the Health Reform Bill pertaining to LTC.

9th week

Well this week I did not have to do anything with my sexual predator project so that was nice. We had a meeting almost all morning Monday and then I helped someone with a project they were doing. Then on Tuesday we had a training/ information seminar for nursing homes with like 5 speakers which lasted 7hrs. It was a little boring and I think most people just came for the CNA hours. Good news was I got all my hours in with just working 2 days, this helped because I have a lot of school work to catch up on. Just 3 more weeks!

8th Week

This week I continued to do my almost impossible assignment about sexual predators and offenders in nursing homes. I seem to have hit a wall and cannot find any more information about it, and even if I find a little more I will still not be able to have a well documented map of Florida containing every different ordnance regarding this. I am thinking of other ways to use the information I obtained without it just going to waist and giving up. I also don't want my boss to think I am a quitter because they are probably going to offer me a part time job for while I am getting my Masters.

As always I did a few other things to help out. I also attended meetings and a memorial service for Budd Bell. I will try to decide what I am going to do with my research and find a way to make it into a decent presentation.

7th Week

This ended up being a good week. I did a lot of work on finding about the different laws and ordinances regarding sexual predators/offenders in nursing homes. Even though I did a lot of work, I was not able to find much information about it. There are maybe 300 different city ordinances in Florida about sexual predators/offenders. I have still not found one that has anything nursing home specific in it. I have been told by my boss and co-workers that there are specialized laws out there but I still have not found any. I even contacted the cities and counties that they told me they were sure had special laws and came up with nothing. So I will try harder next week.

The good thing about this week was getting my GRE and LSAT scores. I got a 1100 and 154 respectively. Both are above average so that's always good. I think I will just get my masters in Public Health. It seems a lot more like something I will enjoy and its a lot easier then Law School.

6th Week

I did not go into work this week. Half of our office was away at the AHCA convention. This was very helpful to me though because I am trying to get ready to take the GRE next Friday. I just decided that Law School might not be for me and that I would like to get a Masters in Public Health. I am going to apply to FSU and hopefully get in for Spring. It has been a little overwhelming for me though because I am taking 18 credits and I had been spending the earlier part of the year studying for the LSAT and now I have the GRE. I can't wait to catch up after I am finally done. I think I am doing sufficient in my classes, just not as good as I have in the past.

5th Week

I was once again bogged down by computer problems this week at work. It slowed down my work but I was still able to get everything done. I had to finish getting my boss prepared for her trip. She was leaving Monday night so I helped her on Monday. I worked Thursday and Friday because she came back. Her trip went well. I spent some time researching the effects that the new Health Care Reforms will have on Nursing Homes. This information is hard to find. I did my best but only found a few things about it and they really didn't help. I also am researching the county laws and ordinances having to do sexual predators/offenders in Nursing Homes.

I continued to try to make sure my ESS project went well. I sent an email out to all the Nursing Homes in hopes to contact the ones whom I could not reach via phone. I think that is the last thing I am going to do for them, if they don't heed to my advice they can just take the fine. I just hope no one gets hurt if there really is a disaster and they were not prepared.

4th Week

This week at FHCA we had the Distric Presidents come visit. We had them tour the Capital and our office. They also enjoyed many speakers. I took the Capital tour with them. I had never been inside the capital building. It is really amazing. The top Floor is all glass and you can see way past Tallahassee.

It wasn't all fun though. My boss is going to a meeting with the Senior Clinicians on Monday in Tampa and we had a lot of preparation to do. I researched all the parent companies and made an updated list of all the nursing homes involved in advancing excellence. I also got some more work done on the LANE.

3rd Week

I had another great week at FHCA. I work 3 days a week and I spent my first 2 days making phone calls. I called around 50 nursing homes to inform them that AHCA had requested we contact them to find out why they were not active on ESS. I gave them information about the program and told them how to fix their status. On my last day I attended a HR sensitivity training meeting. I also attended a lunch meeting with the two coordinators for the Florida State LANE. I am going to try to help them establish a LANE for Florida that will attract providers attention.

Getting the feel for things

I have to say i have been enjoying my internship even though it is nothing like I expected it to be. My first week was only a 2 day week because of a staff retreat. In this time I mostly just familiarized myself with the Association and what they did and tried to remember everybody's names. My experience started out with a staff meeting where i got to hear about what everyone was working on. FHCA is a fairly small organization having only around 15 staff members. Because of this we all meet together and let everyone know what is getting done, or what needs to get done.

This last week was my second week and in which I went to two meetings; one on Hospice and the other with the local Lobbyists. That is not all I did though, I am working on two projects now. The first is to contact our 78 member nursing homes that are not compliant with the new ESS system. I am going to call them and help them get it fixed so they don't get any fines. It is ,as of a few months, ago Florida law. The other project I am working on is a survey to assess quality in ALF. We are working with some other organizations with this but it seems pretty cool.