Home health care

Instead of working on the traumatic brain injury floor at Dodd yesterday, I went out with a home health care nurse to see what home health care is about (it's a rotation requirement; I had no desire to do this). It was not a worthwhile experience.

Not much happened on these visits. I expected there to be some education to the patients about how to care for their ailments at home or how to get around better, but there was none of that. There wasn't even any sort of home "inspection", so to speak, to figure out what changes could be made to make things easier for the patient. In the first building we visited, the patient couldn't walk stairs, yet there were steps leading to the apartment, without an elevator or wheelchair ramp. In the second, the furniture was so cramped into the house that to get past the couch, the patient had to lift her walker over the corner of the couch because there wasn't enough room between it and the wall for her walker to get through, and the nurses didn't say anything about rearranging her furniture to make it easier for her to get around.

Maybe it's just my experience on my occupational medicine rotation (where I learned about the importance of making small changes to reduce injury/increase abilities), but I was rather taken aback by the fact that these things weren't addressed at all. I guess I don't see the point in having someone come out to the home to provide care if they're not going to address the issue of the home.