Home Health Clinicals

So I just finished a 5 week rotation in home health. If you don't want to read this entry you can go below and click on the link to watch my video talking about this clinical rotation :). Home health falls under the bigger umbrella of community nursing. We worked out of an office with a clinic and mostly did things such as dressing changes, VAC dressings, IV therapy, palliative visits, ostomy care, staple/stitches removal, drain care etc. If patients are well enough they come into the clinic and if they are unable to come into the clinic the home health nurses go out to do home visits. I was paired with one RN and her and I worked together for the whole 5 weeks. I really enjoyed my time in home health. I have become extremely comfortable working with dressing changes and more confident in my choices of dressings due to the exposure I've had here. Palliative exposure was very minimal but it still makes me uncomfortable and sad and I don't think I'll ever be good at it but who knows. Something important I learned in home health is how important it is to know all your patho, bio, and pharm so thoroughly and really understand the disease processes and ask WHY something is happening so you can begin to see the "bigger" picture instead of just the one task that you are doing. In my job as an ESN we are very task focused and complete all our tasks and its job well done but how many of us stop to ask WHY did this person end up in hospital, HOW can we prevent it, are they okay to go home for discharge? What is delaying their discharge? Maybe this is the part where I begin to think like a real RN...for my next 5 week rotation (Neurology) I want to focus on seeing the "bigger" picture and linking everything together...thats all for now...Hope you guys are having a great semester!

Home Health Clinicals Video