Patients and Clients in Home Care Essay

It is said that â€Å"there’s no better place than home†. This is the comfort that home care provides its patients. It permits the assistance of people that have special needs in the comfort of their homes and with the companionship of their families. Medical services and health assistance can now be obtained without going away from the confines of your home. It is now possible that health service providers will be the ones to go to the patient’s home so that the patient will not have to be confined in a hospital or a nursing institution. Home care is an alternative method to sustain the growing demand for medical health services. Due to the observed surge in the number of people with special needs, unconventional venues for taking care of this people aside from hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and nursing homes were considered. The establishment of home care services answers the demand of different venues for health services. Home care is the offering of medical services by formal providers such as doctors, registered nurses, and physical therapist or by informal providers such as caregivers in the patient’s homes. It aims to promote, reinstate, and sustain the comfort, function, and health of a patient to its maximum limit. Taking care of patients during the last days of their life is also part of the objective. Classifications of home health care includes: preventive, promotive, therapeutic, long-term maintenance, rehabilitative and palliative care(DOH). People that need home care are geriatric individuals, chronically ill patients, persons with disabilities, and patients that are recovering from surgeries. Seventy percent of the clients that availed home health care services are geriatric people of age 65 and above. Disease diagnoses that are most rampant in these home care patients are: Heart disease, diabetes, cerebral vascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), malignant neoplasm, fractures, congestive heart failure, osteoarthritis and allied disorders, and hypertension(NCHS). Care from registered nurses, physical therapists, and social workers; access to medical equipments; check up by doctors; help with running errands; medication delivery; and meal preparation are some of the services that are offered by home health care providers. Types of home care vary with different kind of providers. Skilled care type is offered by licensed medical practitioners like doctors, registered nurses, medical social workers and physical therapist. This type of home care service focuses on the reinstating and maintaining the health of a client. It includes disease diagnoses, disease treatments, wound care, injection and intravenous therapy, medical assessments, nutritional management, and counseling. The other type of service is the home support services that are offered by caregivers or health care aides which are more inclined to domestic tasks like personal hygiene or bathing assistance; running errands; grocery shopping; cooking and eating assistance; light house keeping; and medication reminders(MFMER ). Clients of home care services expect the providers of these services to meet their specific needs. The most common client specifications are good quality care; availability of service; health service provider with appropriate training and expertise; high quality, effective care; and affordable service. Home care providers are expected by clients to give them respect, inflict no harm to them, and treat them well(Nina Preto). They also expect to have their rights as a patient considered, respected and instituted. The law currently implements the home care patients right to: choose their care providers; be informed fully by the health service agency provider of his/her rights and responsibilities as a patient; obtain the needed professional care following the doctor’s orders; receive continuous care; be asked consent prior to any treatment regimen or procedure; advised for any plan changes prior the change; avail service that is safe and in accordance to the professional care needed; be informed of actions in the event of emergency; and to voice opinions regarding the treatment or procedure(Hospice). Different individual conditions require varied specific needs so the provider should be competent enough to be able to address these circumstances. The geriatric or elderly persons for example have various conditions that have complex needs. Usually diseases of the old individuals are multi-factorial; the change of their condition is unpredictable; and outcome of treatment or management is random. So it is best if the home care providers of the elderly with diseases to be registered nurses or doctors for prompt treatment and disease management. Though in other instances home care is employed by geriatric patients that are healthy but in need of assistance in performing their daily tasks from as simple as opening doors for them to household chores. Another example of patients with different needs is the patients with cancer. These individuals are more at ease in the confines of their homes and families. They do not want to be separated from there families because usually these patients gain there strengths from them. The emotional and moral support the families give are vital for a cancer patient. Home care allows these patients to have all the support they can get from there families. As cancer is a devastating disease the home care provider should be able to give support to the patient, address his/her medical needs, and educate the family about the situation of the patient. Diabetes patients on the other hand, need home care providers to always encourage them to control the blood glucose levels because complication development can better be prevented with serious control on glycemia. These patients also need home care providers that are inclined in nutrition for diabetes patients to obtain the needed nutrients without sacrificing their blood glucose levels. Along with the boost of home care industry are problems or issues that need to be resolved. Some of these problems that affect both the home care consumer and the provider are the following: worker related injuries; worker abuse and exploitation by the client; competency of the health care provider; abuse of the client; client prejudice toward the caregiver; worker benefits issue; confidentiality issues in the clients home; and clients being at risk of theft and other forms of crimes. Confidentiality issue in client-caregiver relationship is one of the prime problems of home care services. Prone to this problem are the caregivers or health care aides that have little backgrounds or training in professional ethics and usually provide service to their clients twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Most of them also stay in the houses of their clients so it is common that they know the things that happen inside the house especially among family members. The dilemma is in situations that either the caregiver spill the information he/she knows or if the information is critical to the well-being of the client and the caregiver will not know whether to keep it confidential or not. An example situation is when a client is being battered by a member of his or her family, what will the caregiver do? Is he/she supposed to tell anyone like the authorities or is he/she will just keep silent and wait that other people will discover the situation? If the caregiver gives the information to authorities it might be an invasion of the client’s privacy. Moral risks, virtues, intimacy, and professional ethics are bound with confidentiality issue in home care. Home care service providers should be made sure to have proper training in professional conduct and ethics to avoid any problems that will interfere with the client and their family relationship. Problems such as this needs attention of legislators for the home care consumers to be secured that the service provider they employ are properly trained and knows his place as a home care worker in a family setting. Client prevention of problems related to the home care service provider begins with choosing a competent agency that ensures the capabilities of their workers. Clients should not just consider the monetary factor involve in employing a home care worker to prevent the hiring of low paid providers and yet incompetent in many aspects of health service provision. Health care organizations have to address these problems and anticipate other issues that will emerge for the improvement of the home care service, benefit of the client, and avoidance of dilemma in the part of the caregiver. Government agencies concerned need to make rigorous effort towards the establishment and implantation of rules that would not just protect the home care consumers but the home care service workers as well. In every development there is always the emergence of problems and this is just what happened in home care. The burst of this industry is high-speed that problems are realized only when it was already encountered. The shift from institutionalized health care to home care brought about problems that touch aspects like professional ethics, unavailability of equipments in the patient’s home, monetary factors, client-worker relationship, and home care provider-patient’s family relationship. Despite of this, home care still provides an alternative venue for the patients or clients to have their needs being taken care of. The problems will just have to be addressed for the improvement of the industry. Home care is a promising revolution of institutionalized care wherein patients of institutionalized care are deprived of their right to spend their lives in the comfort of their home and with the presence of their loved ones. Reference http://www.mayoclinic.com/print/home-care-services/HA00086/METHOD=print