Effects of Home-Nursing Care System on Community Nursing Quality Outcomes in Primary Care Units of Songkhla Hospital

Abstract

There has been an increasing trend of the number of bedridden patients in Songkhla province. Therefore, quality home nursing care has become an important work to take care of the patients and support household care givers to be able to provide needed assistance in order to avoid complications and improve quality of life. In this regard, Songkhla Hospital has developed a model for community nursing care that is in line with the criteria set by the Bureau of Nursing, Ministry of Public Health. The objective of this study was to assess the quality of the home nursing care model with regard to the service coverage, satisfaction of both service receivers and providers, the rate of complications, and the proportion of cases with proper care, as well as the timeliness for the hospital transfer when needed. The study was conducted by applying hospital nursing care process at the houses of bedridden patients. The nursing stations were situated at the primary care units within the communities; and the nursing care was managed through the collaboration among registered nursed of Songkhla Hospital, local health personnel, village health volunteers and house-hold care givers. The study samples were 35 registered nurses who were responsible for providing home care services to the patients. The Bureau of Nursing’s quality assessment tool was used to evaluate the study results. It was found that the program was able to achieve 100.00% coverage of comprehensive home-nursing care for bedridden patients; and high level of satisfacion was observed in 97.14% of recipients and 94.29% of providers. Improved self care was identified in 97.20% of the patients; and the percentage of those who had complications was low (2.86%). All hospital transfers were timely (100.00%). Thus, the home visit model was found to be effective in improving the quality of home nusring care; and the approach should be scaled-up to cover the whole province.