Home visit is a simple process where a nurse, health worker or student nurse is going to patient home condition, assess the home and family members health and further if required provide nursing care and health education.
Home visit is important because of following reasons,
- home visit allows a health worker to assess the family environment, house, living conditions, financial stability and also need of the family
- It allows nurse to provide nursing care to people who are not able to come to the hospital for treatment.
- It increase the trust between the health worker and community
- It improve the confidence of community people on health clinics and also increases community awareness and participation in achieving health goals.
- It improves communication skills, IPR skills of Student teacher
Phases of home visit
There are three phases, Pre-visit, During visit and after visit.
Pre-visit phase
In this, health worker visit the house of the community people. Take basic history as name and diseases in the family. Further nurse try to provide the intervention to the family members if possible in the home conditions.
In this, if nurse want to do some intervention or provide nursing care to one of family members, then nurse will take appointment and inform them about that. Then nurse schedule the home visit.
During Visit
During visit, Means it is time when nurse will visit the home for nursing care. Nurse will carry a bag with all the required articles needed for performing procedures.
After performing nursing care nurse will leave home with health education.
After visit
After visit, is assessment of impact of visit. Is patient condition improve or not. If yes then it is a good sign. If not, then nurse will find why this problem arise and will improve this in the next visit.