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Call the Home Care Nurse

The following article is about home care nursing.

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Sincerely,
 
Elizabeth
 
Elizabeth E. Hogue, Esq.
(877) 871-4062
We're watching season eleven of “Call the Midwife,” which is available on PBS and Netflix. The show takes place in the 1950s in London's East End, which is a very poor area of the city. Nurses bicycle throughout the East End to care for patients of all kinds, including mothers giving birth and newborn babies, in their homes. Hospitalizations are relatively rare and reserved only for cases that clearly cannot be managed at home. This is, of course, also how care used to be provided in our country.
 
Here are the scenes that have been most striking:
  • The nurses are caring for a woman in labor. Before the nurses arrive at the patient's home, a neighbor calls an ambulance. The ambulance arrives while the nurses are assisting the patient to give birth. As soon as the ambulance crew enters the patient's home, the nurses explain that the mother and baby are doing well and do not require hospitalization. The nurses ask the crew to leave and they do so. The patient subsequently gives birth to a healthy baby with help from the nurses.
  • The nurses are often depicted as being aware of the dynamics within the patient's entire family. They often take these dynamics into account as they assist their patients.
  • The nurses are aware of what we now call “social determinants of health” and make concerted efforts to address them. For example, if the patient's home is dirty or in disrepair, the nurses marshal resources to fix it. The same goes for patients who are malnourished and in need of food.
  • The nurses are usually very calm, gentle and reassuring, but they are also quite fiercely protective of their patients if circumstances require it. They engender trust in their patients, which is essential to good care.
  • A young nurse explains that her passion for nursing constantly increases, in part because of how much she can learn and achieve. She regards nursing as her life's work.
All in all, the show is a beautiful picture of home health nursing at its best. It is a balm to my coronavirus-ed soul, and stirs renewed hope and expectation that our country will return to this model of care. And, of course, there is definitely the “cuteness factor” of those newborn babies! Check it out!
 
©2022 Elizabeth E. Hogue, Esq. All rights reserved.
No portion of this material may be reproduced in any form without the advance written permission of the author.

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