Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat, there is more than one way to test your employees' OASIS prowess. One approach is to administer a standard, multiple-choice test to employees, notes Mary Newberry, director of Riverside Home Health Care in Kankakee, IL. Riverside's test includes the following questions, which Newberry has shared with Eli:
Another approach is to provide employees in a classroom setting with a module that encourages discussion about the OASIS items and how best to answer them, notes Estelle Wolfe, manager of regulatory compliance with Sharp Home Health in San Diego, CA. Sharp's module includes items such as the following: 0: Normal Vision: sees adequately in most situations; can see medication labels, newsprint. 2: Severely impaired: cannot locate objects without hearing or touching them or patient nonresponsive. Guidelines:
a. Start of Care/Resumption of Care
b. Follow-Up c. D/C
d. Transfer to inpatient facility
e. Death at home
a. Patient able to ambulate >20 feet
b. Improvement in ability to ambulate between admit and d/c
c. Patient obtained a walker
d. All of the above
1: Partially impaired: cannot see medication labels or newsprint, but can see obstacles in path, and the surrounding layout, can count fingers at arms length.
0: Patient has no pain or pain does not interfere with activity or movement
1: Less often than daily
2: Daily, but not constantly 5 pts.
3: All of the time 5 pts.
Guidelines:
Check medication list. If the patient takes pain medication daily to enable activity, then number 2 or 3 applies.