The community health setting I chose for this week’s discussion is home health nursing. Home healthcare was initially reserved for wealthy citizens that could afford to hire doctors and nurses to come into their homes and care for them or their family members. By the end of the nineteenth century, this luxury was extended to the poor to prevent the spread of contagious diseases. By the 1930s and 1940s, the increasing number of chronically ill patients was compromising the capacity of hospitals (Fulmer, 2017). Since the hospitals were assuming more and more responsibility for patient care costs, they decided it wouldn’t be unreasonable for chronically ill patients to be treated at home for a lower cost since the families would assume the caregiving responsibility.
While home health nurses use health promotion to improve the patient’s well-being, trying to prevent and protect patients from the effects of chronic disease is the main focus. “Leavell and Clark (1958) identified three levels of prevention commonly described in nursing practice: primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention” (Nies, 2019, p.7). Tertiary prevention is directed at patients that are already affected by a disease. A home health nurse would use tertiary prevention to focus on patients that have already been affected by an illness or disease and prevent the problem from getting worse. A home health nurse would also use tertiary prevention in patients that have chronic illnesses to reduce exacerbations. Education is an important part of tertiary prevention because if the patient fully understands the disease process, they can take precautions to aid inn their health. Nies (2019), uses the example of teaching insulin administration and diabetic education to a patient recently diagnosed with Diabetes.
Place your order