Home health question?

TexasPediRN · Feb 24, 2006

Hi I'm new here and my name is Lindsay. I am a nursing student at Bloomsburg University and I am a first semester senior. I am currently doing a home health rotation for the next 3 weeks. I was wondering what are some of the issues concerning home health nursing today? How do these issue(s) make you feel? What do you think the future holds for home health care?
If anyone can answer this for me I would greatly appreciate it and I look forward to talking with with you all

Bloomsburg University...good old PA right? (unless there is a Bloom U somewhere else)..

I do private duty nursing, but Im going to answer your questions regardless of that fact.

A main issue concerning home health nursing is your safety. Sometimes you will enter an environment that is just scary and you need to remember that safety is always first.

Its hard to go into certain homes- I've been in homes infested with roaches..and I know other nurses that have had horror stories of rats crawling on vent tubing. :eek:

I think the future for home health is promising. When you can manage a patient outside a hospital setting, they can feel better about themselves and heal quicker, and its also more cost effective.

Good luck in your rotation!

-Meghan :nurse:

homehealth43130 · Feb 25, 2006

Hello Stellar

One of the upcoming issues with home care is pay for performance (P4P). This is where home care agencies (skilled intermittent) will be paid according to outcomes. Everyone thinks that they give good care, I don't know of anyone who goes to work not wanting to do their best for their patients, but this system of payment will differentiate agencies. As no one yet knows exactly how this will work, it does promote a certain amount of stress as agencies work on obtaining good outcomes as measured by the OASIS tool. This also opens up some ethical issues as to who or what type of client you will admit to your service. Will you admit alot of patients who you know will not give you good outcomes? Can you afford to admit thoes patients who are non-compliant with their treatment regime? These are just a few of the questions that the emphasis on outcomes has and is forcing agencies to deal with.

Home care has a bright future, but it may not look exactly as it does now. Most of the forward thinkers in the industry forsee a shift from institutional care into the home setting. This will mean more patients requiring all types of care including an increase in the non-skilled services such as homemaking and personal care. It is an intersting time to be in home care.

I hope this answers some of your questions and gives you and your classmates some discussion topics. Good luck with your last year of school.