Types of Home Care Services

November is national Home Care Month and to celebrate it, we will be putting up posts about the different realms home care covers, so you may understand what to look for when deciding to use home care.

Home care is one of the fastest growing and most cost-effective providers of the health care industry, and is clearly preferred by patients. Who of us wouldn’t prefer to be cared for in our own homes rather than in a hospital or other institution?

Types of Home Care Services:

Actually home care is a name that encompasses many different forms of care and services.

There are non-medical supportive services available through home care that help people who need some assistance remain independent. These are services which can extend the ability of many people to live in their own homes. These services are provided by paraprofessionals such as home health aides, certified nursing assistants, homemakers and companions. Services can include assistance with bathing, meal preparation, companionship, shopping, etc. Companions and homemakers give comfort, support and assistance to those who want to continue an active, independent lifestyle in their own home.

Intermittent skilled services are provided through a home care agency by Registered Nurses RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) or Licensed Vocational Nurses (LVNs). These professionals visit your home periodically and provide health status assessments, teaching about diseases and treatment for clients and families, taking samples for lab tests, nutritional counseling, medication training and compliance, wound care, venipuncture, ostomy teaching and management, IV management and more.

Additionally, many therapies can be provided at home to speed recovery from illness, injury or surgery. These include physical therapy to regain physical motion and strength, occupational therapy to regain day to day skills such as dressing and feeding oneself, and speech and language therapy to improve breathing, swallowing or communicating.

Many home care patients require continuous care for major portions of every day, if
not 24 hours a day. These include:

• Technology-dependent patients who have respiratory conditions treated by ventilators, infusion.

• Functionally disabled patients who may include individuals who are paralyzed,mentally disabled, or unable to perform activities of daily living.

HawthoRNe Premeries Tonight

Tonight at 9/8C TNT will premier its new show HawthoRNe, a character-driven drama series about a nurse who is a true everyday hero.

HawthoRNe is about a compassionate and headstrong Chief Nursing Officer heading up a group of dedicated nurses at Richmond Trinity Hospital who spend long days and nights on the hospital’s front lines.

Jada Pinkett Smith plays Christina Hawthorne, the kind of nurse you want on your side when you or someone you love is in the hospital. She is the kind of nurse who fights for her patients and doesn’t let them slip through the cracks. When necessary, she takes on doctors and administrators who are overworked, distracted or just unable to see the human being behind the hospital chart.

Whether showing humanity to a homeless woman, trying to talk a suicidal cancer patient off a ledge or exposing a doctor’s near-fatal error, Hawthorne will do everything in her power to help her patients. When a patient’s care is at risk, she doesn’t hesitate to violate protocol, defend her staff or stand up to administrators who seem to have forgotten a hospital’s true purpose.

But the long days at the hospital and Hawthorne’s intense focus on helping others take a toll on her personal life. Christina is recently widowed – her husband died one year ago after a battle with cancer, leaving her to raise a smart, rebellious teen-age daughter on her own. Hawthorne is still coming to terms with losing her husband, finding a way to balance her career with her equally important role as a single parent, and finding the time to take care of someone who always seems to fall through the cracks – herself.

Joining Pinkett Smith in HAWTHORNE is Michael Vartan (Alias) as Dr. Tom Wakefield, the oncologist who treated Christina’s husband and serves as Chief of Surgery for the hospital. The cast also includes Suleka Mathew (Men in Trees) as Bobbie Jackson, a fellow nurse and one of Hawthorne’s best friends; David Julian Hirsh (Lovebites) as Ray Stein, a nurse struggling with being accepted in a female-dominated profession; Christina Moore (90210) as Candy Sullivan, a nurse with a unique sense of duty; and Hannah Hodson (TNT’s The Ron Clark Story) as Camille, Hawthorne’s daughter. In addition, special guest star Joanna Cassidy (Six Feet Under) portrays Amanda, Hawthorne’s mother-in-law, who also happens to be a member of the hospital board.

(Image and text from www.tnt.tv)

For more about the show visit: http://www.tnt.tv/series/hawthorne