Documenting Patient Care in the Home???Legal Issues for the Home Health Nurse (Part II)

Low levels of patient numeracy are pervasive, yet patients are expected to use basic math skills to maintain health, avoid ill health, and make important health decisions. This article summarizes what we know about best practices when communicating numeracy-based information to patients. We offer advice to home health nurses faced with challenges of caring for patients with low numeracy and who are responsible for their health and safety that require quantitative reasoning. Comprehending statistical data is difficult and counterintuitive for many people (and experts), and we offer examples of widely misunderstood formats of quantitative information but clarify them in ways that will benefit the practicing home health nurse. We conclude that patients need help understanding and using numbers while nurses need help explaining them.

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Ethical and Legal Issues in Home Health and Long-Term Care: Challenges and Solutions

Journal of Gerontological Nursing ◽

10.3928/0098-9134-19970901-13 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 23 (9) ◽

pp. 55-55

Author(s):

Dolores M Alford

Keyword(s):

Long Term Care ◽

Home Health ◽

Legal Issues ◽

Term Care ◽

Ethical And Legal Issues

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Staff perceptions of emergency and home-care telemedicine

Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare ◽

10.1258/1357633981932037 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 101-107 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Risa P Hayes ◽

Erin B Duffey ◽

Jeffrey Dunbar ◽

John W Wages ◽

Stephen E Holbrook

Keyword(s):

Emergency Department ◽

Home Care ◽

Patient Care ◽

Pilot Trial ◽

Health Agency ◽

Home Health ◽

Emergency Setting ◽

Urban Hospital ◽

Telemedicine System ◽

System Utilization

The utilization of a low-bandwidth telemedicine system for emergency and for home-care patients was studied in a pilot trial. The emergency setting was the emergency department of a small urban hospital and its emergency medical service EMS ; the home-care setting was the home-health agency affiliated to the hospital. Utilization data were obtained through baseline and follow-up interviews with EMS technicians, emergency department and home-health nurses, and the project coordinator. The results indicated that initial enthusiasm for the use of the telemedicine system was not followed by a commitment to the system's utilization during the trial by the relevant administrations. Barriers to optimum utilization were identified, but the actual value of the system to patient care could not be determined. We conclude that the value of a telemedicine system to patient care cannot be realized unless there is an organizational commitment from the top to system utilization.

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