Caring : National Association for Home Care magazine
-
The Visiting Nurse Association of Los Angeles responded to the possibility of civil unrest during the Rodney King trial by drafting a plan for disaster readiness. Both management and staff worked together to prepare the agency for the continuation of services during civil unrest or other possible disasters.
-
Caregivers for AIDS patients find themselves drawn in to their patients' lives--sometimes inappropriately. Others find that to avoid this situation, they must maintain a distance they might not prefer. The difficulty in defining boundaries points out the need for support and counseling for this group of professional caregivers.
-
Mark is a 45-year-old man with advanced AIDS. His care partner, Gary, has a full-time job in the design industry. A home care aide visits Mark five days a week for 10 hours at a time to provide personal care while Gary is at work. ⋯ In May Gary must attend a conference out of town and he is worried:who will care for Mark for those three days? Gary calls the At Home Options (AHOP) nurse and explains the situation. She arranges for nighttime nursing coverage for those three days, and ensures that Mark's home care aide can stay for the weekend. Gary is able to attend his conference and concentrate on his work, secure in the knowledge that Mark will be well cared for and that scheduled respite care, although not a benefit with traditional insurance, is covered through the AHOP program.
-
Innovative home care programs, providing a variety of services to persons with HIV infection and their families and reflecting different health, political, cultural, social, and philosophical concepts, have been developed in Africa, starting in 1987. In 1989 the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Programme on AIDS conducted a descriptive study of some of these programs. It is hoped that these experiences will assist planners and health care providers in their decision making and thereby benefit persons with HIV infection and their families. The lessons learned about the context, backgrounds, structure, process, and outcome of the six selected home care programs can be used and adapted by policymakers and program planners in their own settings when deciding on "their" model of home care.