Reflective Essay On Home Health Nursing

As I woke up in the morning to get ready for my home health day, I couldn’t help but be excited to try something new. I had tons of questions and couldn’t wait to explore what was behind the door of home health nursing.

Nursing skills

Nursing skills are used in every nursing setting that is known. These are specific skills that guide and give the true definition of nursing. Throughout my visits to different houses with the home health nurse assigned to me I noticed that nursing assessment was one skill that was needed. One of the patients had broken ribs due to a surgery and needed to wear a brace. The nurse asked if it was okay to assess her and she said it would be fine. The nurse pulled out a stethoscope and some gloves. She began by listening

The first similarity would be assessment because the home health nurse assessed each patient from health to toe and as a nursing student I know we use it all the time in acute care. Assessment is important in realizing how well a patient is improving and if there are any changes that need to be evaluated. Being the patients advocate is another area of similarity. Patient advocacy is important in both setting because most of the time the patients do not understand why or what is being used. It is our jobs as health care workers to be there for our patients and stand up for them when needed. Calling the doctor to have an order placed is also a similarity in both areas that surprised me. The home health nurse explained that when she wants to try something new with the patients, she still needs to call the primary doctor just like you need to do in an acute setting. The doctors are still in charge and need to be informed about what is going on with their

In an acute setting nurse’s do not have as much time to educate patients. With home health nursing education is what you are primarily doing. A lot of the time with home health nursing consists of talking to your patients, figuring out what’s going on and educating them about how to improve in specific areas. Another difference would be that there is more one on one time with patients in the home health setting. Throughout the day my nurse and I got to spend a great amount of time with just one patient. Our main concern at that time was that one patient, instead of having a group of them that all need cared for. Another difference would include just observing the patient at home. With home health nursing, you get to see where the patient lives, how and what they do daily. This allows us to figure out if there are any safety hazards that need to be addressed such as poor living conditions. With acute care settings, you can’t evaluate a patient’s home or