Home health nurses focus their practice on promoting the optimal health, wellbeing, and quality of life of patients, their families, and caregivers within their homes and communities. They provide care and support of patients of all ages, from prenatal through end of life. Their practice emphasizes patient and caregiver education, counseling and coaching toward achieving independent self-management of patient's illness, disease, and disability. These specialists provide skill that was unavailable, even unanticipated, a few years ago, and coordinate care amid the ongoing upheavals in health care. This book is an essential guide for their practice now and into the near future.
In 2013, ANA convened a workgroup of home health nurse experts, from across their practice specialty, to update and expand the 2007 edition to better reflect contemporary and frame future practice. With input from other nurses and organizations, they developed Home Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, 2nd Edition. It is a comprehensive, up-to-date delineation of the competent level of nursing practice and professional performance common to and expected from home health registered nurses whatever their practice level or setting. The publication's scope or practice addresses what is expected of all home health nurses, specifying the who, what, where, when, why, and how of their practice. That detailed scope of practice discussion is given the context-the underlying assumptions, characteristics, environments and settings, education and training requirements, key issues and trends, and ethical and conceptual bases of home health nursing-needed to understand and use the standards.
Those 16 standards, providing a framework for evaluating practice outcomes, and goals, are those by which all home health nurses are held accountable for their practice. The set of specific competencies accompanying each standard serves as evidence of minimal compliance with that standard.
A foundational volume that is primarily for those directly involved with home health nursing practice, education, and research, other nursing and allied healthcare providers, researchers, and scholars will find value in this content. It is also a resource for others involved in home health, such as employers, insurers, lawyers, policy makers, regulators, and stakeholders.
A special thank you to the volunteer members of the ANA workgroup for their time and excellent work in revising the 2014 edition of Home Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice.
Workgroup
Marilyn D. Harris, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, Chairperson
Lisa Gorski, MS, HHCNS-BC, CRNI, FAAN
Patricia Hanks, MS, RN, COS-C
Patricia M. Hunt, MS, RN
Karen S. Martin, MSN, RN, FAAN
Mary Narayan, MSN, RN, HHCNS-BC, CTN, COS-EC
Maria Radwanski, MSN, RN, CRRN
The work group that created this 2014 revision of Home Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice gratefully acknowledges the work of the previous task forces of 2007, 1999, 1992, and 1986 that initiated the original documents on home health nursing.
Reviewers
Deborah Center, MSN, RN, CAN
Joann K. Erb, PhD, RN
Tina M. Marrelli, MA, RN, MSN, FAAN
Imelda A. Nwoga, MSc, RN, MSN, PhD
ANA Staff
Carol J. Bickford, PhD, RN-BC, CPHIMS- Content Editor
Maureen E. Cones, Esq.- Legal Counsel
Yvonne Daley Humes, MSA - Project Coordinator
Eric Wurzbacher, BA - Projector editor
About the American Nurses Association
The American Nurses Association (ANA) is the only full-service professional organization representing the interests of the nation's 3.1 million registered nurses through its constituent/ state nurses associations and its organizational affiliates. The ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the rights of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Congress and regulatory agencies on healthcare issues affecting nurses and the public.