What’s Job for Home Nursing ?

Hi there ! I’m Mao who works for Home Nursing Station.

I can guess that many people have ever heard “Home Nursing” but they don’t know exactly about it.

According to the report from Japanese Nursing Association, there are only 50,000 Visiting Nurses of total 1,200,000 nurses in Japan. That’s only 4 percentage.

So that, I will tell you the daily work for Home Nursing.

If you are willing to join the Home Nursing, I would recommend to see the link below.

Daily Work for Home Nursing

Home Nursing is to visit the patient’s home to care them as usual work of nurse.

We visit there and care for mainly 30 – 90 minutes based on the contract agreement.

Following are daily work for Home nursing.

These daily work is almost the same from hospital. But in case of Home Nursing, I will be supposed to care patient alone.

Interview

The interview is one of the basic work as nurse.

I ask the patient –

「How are you feeling today ?」

「did you take medicine ?」

to grasp accurate condition of them for Physical Assessment.

Interview is understood as easy by many people but it’s very important to judge the condition.

Vital Check

Doing vital check is able to judge the condition with digitized data.

We need to comprehensively judge the patient with both subjective condition by patients and objective condition by the data.

So that, we usually measure “Body Temperature”, “Blood Pressure”, “Pulse” and “Respiration” etc.

Meal Management

Eating food is being a human basis.

We support and manage whether patient can eat a meal properly.

It’s not only the patient but also their family. We advice the family, because most of the time, the family and/or relatives prepare the meal to the patient.

The Visiting Nurse is sometimes required to have a knowledge and skill about the meal management.

Excretion Support

the patient who is not capable of excreting by himself needs a support to do so.

Excretion is a one of the important physiological phenomenon. Therefore the nurse has to carefully supports it not to hurt their self-esteem.

Couple of patients hate our support of excretion because of self-esteem.

Do not force your support in that case.

Oral Care

Oral care is basically to brush the teeth for the patient.

While brushing, I carefully observe the internal mouth whether any disease appears.

In case of serious condition, I recommend to see a dentist.

Intravenous Drip & Insulin Injection

If the patient usually takes a drip and/or insulin injection, I support them as usual.

During the care of Home Nursing with me, I can replace intravenous drip bag. But most of the time, the family and/or relatives need to do that.

So I often explain how to do replacement and let them practice for patient.

It’s not many times but sometimes, the Visiting Nurse is required to insert a drip.

The inserting drip is necessary with high experience. If you can do this, you will be come in handy by your Home Nursing Station.

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is usually supported by specialists. But I do it sometimes.

In order the rehabilitation is deeply involved to Home Nursing, both nurse and specialist are always cooperating each other to care the patients.

Actually there are few rehabilitation staff in Home Nursing Station.

Advice to Family

For patient living a healthy life, support from their family or relatives is greatly necessary.

I always ask them to manage the meal and medicines. When I visit there, I check they could manage by themselves.

The family and I need a strong relationship to care the patient.

My Schedule a Day

I will tell you my schedule a day as a Visiting Nurse.

Mainly I visit the patient’s home and care but I have to also do office work more than I expected before coming Home Nursing Station.

My business hour is from 8:45 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

It’s not special shift from common company as people know.

Morning  Greeting

Morning greeting will usually begin at 8:40 and I arrive at Home Nursing Station 5 minutes prior and change the clothes.

During the Morning greeting, all staff share the today’s schedule and handover to each other.

Even though the visiting nurse often works alone, few nurses will visit one patient. So that we always must share the condition even small for patients.

If the management and the doctor have an notice to us, information will be shared to us at that time.

All staff receive the cell phone to be able to always contact each other as a group.

Also there is a information board that shows the schedule of all staff. Everybody can check who are where is now.

Visit Home & Care

After morning greeting, I depart the office and move to patient’s home by car.

In case of my schedule, I usually visit 2 – 3 patients in the morning. In the hard schedule, I visit maximum 6 patients in the morning.

Care menu is shown in the “Home Nursing Instruction” issued by the doctor.

I start the care with interview first then, I do vital check ordinary.

In keeping with the menu, I also support the having meal, excretion and bath etc.

I extremely get sweating after the care even one patient.

Lunch Time

We can have a lunch break for a hour between the visits.

I usually go to convenience store and buy the sandwich or rice ball then, have them quickly.

When I have a chance to go back my home in the lunch time, I have a lunch with enjoy.

by the way, people think that the nurses have considered health more than people but it’s not true.

I know the most of the nurses can’t control myself instead because of busy.

Visit Home & Care

After enjoying a lunch, I visit other few patients.

Most of patients expect the home nursing to have good service more than the hospital.

Therefore, the nurses have to have high skill and experienced knowledge for the care.

After visiting all patients a day, I become exhausted and go back an office.

Some of the Home Nursing Station permit the nurse to go home directly after final patient.

Report & Office Work

After coming back to the office, I make a report and share the handover to other nurses.

These operation is the almost same from hospital.

When I take a holiday, other nurse visits the patient to care. The handover is very important.

Others

One thing I love Home Nursing is that relation to other nurses is not deeper than hospital.

Many nurses are struggling about relationship with other colleagues and some of them retired helplessly.

On the other hand, I saw many nurses from hospital and they say “Home Nursing is lesser stress than hospital.”

If you are still working at hospital and have big stress now, please consider to change the job to Home Nursing.

Certainly we have a stress in the Home Nursing Station, especially when we negotiate the shift with other nurses.

The reason is that most of nurses want to take a holiday in Saturday and Sunday.

If you can say “Saturday and Sunday are ok to me.”, you will be highly appreciated by others.

Conclusion

Actually the care menu of both hospital and home nursing are not big difference.

One point I said difference is that the nurses visit the patient’s home and care them alone.

We can’t ask other nurse to help in most of time while working.

But most of Home Nursing Station are able to work flexibly to the nurses and I am surely still thinking Home Nursing is good choice for me.

I hope you become a good nurse standing by all patients.