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Spending your final days in a familiar environment near your family, friends, and all the things you love and matter to you is more memorable and soothing than staying in a hospital. Most people prioritize devoting their final days of life to staying at home, near their loved ones on their bed.
Taking leave from the hospital and choosing home nursing is not about giving up or waiting for death; it is more about finding a way to spend quality time in this last phase of life. A sick person can’t stay at home without any care; because the immediate family can’t care for a terminal patient professionally. That’s where home nursing is recommended.
Home nursing is a system of providing healthcare by skilled nurses and staff to the patients under the direction of their doctors. These services include — physical and professional care along with therapies. Home nursing allows the immediate family to stay near the patient 24-hours while taking clinical and professional care of the patient. Homecare services have gotten more common during the past years.
Nowadays, dedicated professional nursing courses are available through institutions focused on preparing health practitioners to take care of terminal patients in their homes. There are several focused courses, specifically bsn to dnp courses for nurses, designed to educate nurses in various services for individual patients, such as treatment plans, psychological assessments, and managing terminal patient care.
Table of Contents
EFFECTS OF HOME NURSING.
Better Care Environment:
The health care environment found in homes is different compared to hospitals and other healthcare institutions. For instance, home nurses focus on one patient, whereas in hospitals, they have other nurses working with them, which sometimes takes their concentration.
Home nurses focus on creating a better care plan and strategies for the patient. They stress collaboration with the hospital for diagnosis and find it easier to assemble the patient’s relevant information to prepare with the essential equipment.
Home nurses also help create pain-controlled, individual attention and a comforting environment for the patient.
Greater Responsibility On Nurses:
The nurse-physician relationship does not involve much direct physician contact — doctors rely on nurses for assessments and communications with their patients. However, in hospitals, nurses are accompanied by their colleagues and other medical staff. Home nurses have greater responsibilities because they are single-handedly fulfilling all the medical requirements of the patient.
Moreover, home nurses have to make themselves available round the clock, which tends to mess up their personal lives. Home-nursed patients receive the caregiver’s undivided attention — often resulting in a positive outcome for them — which sometimes can’t be said for the caregiver, though.
Patient Dominance:
Home Nursing ensures a higher degree of attention in the home setting environment, limited access to informal caregivers, and changeable situations to every patient. Hospitals also value patient autonomy; many hospitals prioritize the decisions of patients before taking any action.
Nonetheless, in-home nursing settings, the patient is inviolably dominant. Thus, compared to hospitals, patients at home have a say in determining the implementations of specific interventions. It might not always turn out great; sometimes, patients become rigid and stubborn, and they start messing up their medication schedule.
Disconnection with The Hospital:
One of the adverse effects of home nursing is that it sometimes disconnects the patients from their doctors. Nonetheless, home nurses strive hard to give their patients the required medical care; their roles are limited.
The disconnection with the patient’s doctor might reduce patients’ safety, which can cause issues with the patient. But, with qualified nurses, this is seldom the case. It is why nurses are broadening their expertise through online education to cater to patients with complex illnesses.
Increased Dependency:
The primary goal of home nursing was to empower patients; however, sometimes, it ends negatively. Home nurses are trained to help patients carrying out daily life activities according to their difficulties or dependence.
Home nurses work with patients to help them gain proficiency in their daily life activities. They assist them with equipment and revised strategies; hence, some patients respond to it in total dependency. They start relying on nurses for the most basic tasks – eating, toileting, transferring, and even walking.
Emotional Trauma for Nurses:
The dependency is not the only negative effect; the emotional attachment between the caregiver and the patient is another vast effect. Different scientific research has proved that caregivers usually get attached to their patients, disturbing them later.
Mainly, dealing with terminally ill patients creates anxiety for home care nurses. Not only do they feel sad for their dying patients, but their deaths provoke their worries and concerns, which results in constant stress.
Therefore, medical training institutions are constantly preparing nurses for the role of providing end-of-life care. In the past, nurses were not ready to cope with such situations, but this is rarely the case with proper education and training.
Conclusion:
Home nursing assists patients in staying near their families or getting undivided attention, but with negative impacts on patients’ dependency and emotional trauma for caregivers can sometimes be a problem.
Nurses need proper education and training to avoid getting too attached to their patients and being optimistic about their caregivers’ roles. Terminal patients can sometimes cause anxiety which often prevents home nurses from living their lives without negative thoughts.
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