An Explanation Of The 3 Main Types Of Home Health Care

Blog

The term home health care is a general term that is applied to a variety of different types of healthcare and support that one can get in their home. Home health care is designed to provide you with professional assistance with health tasks outside of the traditional health care system. Understanding the different types of home care available to you can help you find the right home care for your parents or yourself.

#1 Personal Care & Companionship

There are many different terms used to describe personal care and companionship style of home care. This type of care is often referred to as complain care, senior care, homemaker care, non-medical care and home health aide services. All of these terms refer to the same type of overarching personal care and companionship.

Personal care and companionship is the type of care that many seniors need who are not seriously ill but just need help keeping up with everyday tasks that they used to do on their own. This includes help with more personal tasks, such as dressing and bathing. It also includes help with more basic everyday tasks as well, such as picking up the house, preparing meals and doing laundry.

The purpose of a personal care and companionship is to have someone there to assist seniors with these tasks. That doesn't turn the home healthcare worker into a cook or a maid; instead, they are there to help seniors complete these tasks to the best of their ability and fill in the slack where help is necessary.

One doesn't need a medical degree or a nursing degree to be this type of home care worker. Generally, certification and training, and sometimes a two-year degree are required for this type of work.

#2 Private Duty Nursing Care

Private duty nursing care also goes by many different names. You may hear different home healthcare services refer to this type of care as nursing care, adult nursing or home-based skilled nursing, long-term nursing. This type of care is also often referred to based on the type of work the nurse will be doing, such as ventilator care, catastrophic care or tracheostomy care.

With this type of care, a trained nurse is coming into a senior's home to provide them with direct and personal care. The level of care should be similar or even better than the level of care that a senior would get in a hospital or in a nursing home. It is provided to individuals who have a chronic illness or injury or a serious disability.

Depending on the type of medical situation, the nurse may stop by for a few hours a day to address medical needs, or they may be there all day long to provide constant care.

#3 Home Health Care

The term home health care is generally applied to short-term care that a patient is directed to receive by their doctor following a stay in the hospital. This type of care is designed to help a patient recover from an illness and often is designed to keep and prevent a patient from getting sick or developing complications.

This type of care is often called intermittent skilled care, Medicare-certified home health care or visiting nurse services. This type of care is not exclusively for seniors or people with chronic or long-term disabilities. This type of home health care often occurs after a major surgery or when someone is recovering from a serious illness, such as pneumonia.

Visiting nurse services is a mixture of the other types of healthcare. It is generally provided by a certified nurse, and will cover one's medical needs, and may also address personal grooming and hygiene, as well as food preparation, needs as well. Good hygiene and a well-balanced diet are all part of the recovery process. 

Check out a website like http://www.inyourhomecares.com/ for more information and assistance. 

1 November 2017