News :A Month to Honor Our Homecare & Hospice Heroes

Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009

Because November is National Homecare & Hospice Month, we would like to pay tribute to the dedicated homecare nursing professionals, including RNs, LPN/LVNs, CNAs, and HHAs.  These individuals truly enable the elderly, disabled, and chronically ill to remain comfortable in their homes.

Maxim Healthcare Services is proud to recognize in-home caregivers during this special month.

What Homecare & Hospice Nurses Do
While home healthcare is generally regarded as an option for providing long-term care to the country’s growing elderly population, hospice care provides comfort, compassion, and support to patients and their families in the most comfortable environment possible. Patients are referred to hospice care for end-of-life care so that they may live as fully and as comfortably as possible.

How Homecare & Hospice Nurses Help Their Patients
Homecare nurses assess, plan, implement, and evaluate patient care by performing focused interviews to identify specific patient needs.

Homecare nurses then evaluate the signs and symptoms associated with a patient’s condition, while also collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data and information from other healthcare professionals to document actual and/or potential nursing diagnoses.

Additionally, homecare nurses help provide a safe, comfortable, and therapeutic environment for each patient by:

• Initiating and evaluating patient and/or family education
• Revising a plan of care according to assessment/evaluation
• Indicating changes in medical plan of care
• Documenting the patient’s response to nursing and other interventions
• Monitoring safety and effectiveness of the environment and equipment

Hospice nurses focus on maintaining the quality of remaining life while addressing the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of both the patient and the family. Because of the necessity to demonstrate compassion in the anticipation of impending loss and grief, responsibilities for a hospice nurse generally include making clinical judgments in an effective, efficient manner with supervision.

Other aspects of hospice care include all of those listed above for homecare, as well as:

• Administering medications for optimum patient pain management
• Utilizing critical thinking and performance ability in the coordination of patient care
• Consistently performing according to nursing standards
• Being accountable in managing patient care
• Assisting others in the management of patient care

Why Homecare & Hospice Nurses Do What They Do
When hospice becomes necessary, families realize someone will be entering their lives and their home to step in as the final caregiver, but they may not realize that this is the time to start preparing for an end-of-life scenario for their loved one.

Hospice nurses do their jobs well because they are caretakers who can walk into varied situations, assess the issues, and intervene to ease a family’s emotional pain. Hospice nurses help relieve suffering and hardship for both the patient and their family. They thrive on the compassion they can share with families in these most difficult of times.

Hospice nurses also know how to educate a family on what will happen each day as their loved one gets weaker. Finally, they know how to prepare the patients to let go and guide the family on how to cope with and understand that process.

Want To Know More?
Hospice and homecare nurses are truly heroes because of their daily outpouring of compassionate care to patients and families during the final stages of life.  Whether you’re a nursing student or a seasoned professional, visit Maxim Nurses for more information.[1]