Empowering Nurses at the Bedside and in Business

Hospital At Home

I have written previously about the concept of “hospital at home.”  I read in a recent issue of Becker’s Hospital Review an interview with Michelle Mahon who is the Assistant Director of Nursing Practice at National Nurses United.

Ms. Mahon expressed concerns, as have I, about hospitals at home.

Did you ever have a patient who you knew, by the feeling in your gut, had something seriously wrong with them even though when you took their vitals, everything looked fine?

I had one such patient, a young woman, who I sensed was experiencing something that was wrong and shortly thereafter, she started screaming at the top of her lungs as she was having a stroke.

In a hospital nowadays, a Rapid Response team is available to help this patient.  At home, nothing is available.

If a patient is sick enough to be hospitalized and requires nursing care, a private home cannot deal with a complication such as pulmonary embolus, a blood clot, or a heart attack, it means that the patient is at risk by treating them at home.

When they are at home, there are untrained personnel who rely solely on the monitors and an untrained person’s assessments.  They may send out an EMT or a home health aide, but these caregivers cannot take the place of nurses.

Nurses’ assessments are valuable, and patients deserve quality care!  We all know that complications can happen at any time.

Before rolling out the hospital at home, there should have been peer reviewed clinical trials to ensure that it is safe.  Yet, none were done, and the patients now are the “guinea pigs” of these new care models.

While my preference is to recuperate at home rather than in a hospital, I know that I trust the nurses in the hospital and that would be the best place for me.

Please leave a comment below to let me know your thoughts on the “hospital at home” concept.

 

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