The purpose of this descriptive evaluation study on home care effects was to identify the necessary home care nursing service activities involving clinical practice area of specialty on the postoperative orthopedics patients who were admitted at Chonnam University Hospital, Department of Orthopedics from April 1994 to Dec. 1994.
Survey method was used to collect the data on the changes of recovery process in the level of functioning of musculoskeletal and activities of daily living patient and primary caregiver satisfaction, and caregiver burden at three different time intervals: at hospital discharge, home care discharge, and 1 month from home care discharge on four different subgroups of postoperative orthopedic patients.
Findings show that at hospital discharge the rates in all five area of musculoskeletal, ADL function recovery, family care giver burden, and patient and family satisfaction, hip surgery patients had the lowest scores and spinal surgery patients, the highest. However at home care discharge, the muscloskeletal and ADL function recovery was the slowest among the hip surgery cases, but in the rate of patient and family caregiver satisfaction they demonstrated the highest. These results thought to be associated with a home care nurse effect specific to hip surgery patients as reported in the Suh’s evaluation study of home care nurse clinical competency researched on the same patient population.
In conclusion, the effectiveness of home health care may depend on the practice ability of individual home care nurses.
Based on these research outcomes, further study suggestions can be made as below.
1) Home care CareMap development for the postoperative orthopedic patients would be helpful for the efficiency of care.
2) Research is needed to identify the factors impeding self-care ability for those patients who are medically cleared as ADL functioning intact.
3) Research on home care effects towards family nursing seems to be important.
|