Home Health Care Services Delivered by Nurses to the Relatives with COVID-19

Abstract

Background and objective: Kurdish community have a long-standing history of looking after family members and loved one in times of sickness. Caring for COVID-19 patients at home is a huge responsibility and challenging. Despite fear of losing family members, relatives working in the health care system dedicated their time to care for their relatives affected by COVID-19. No studies have been done to investigate the care provided to the COVID-19 patients at home-setting by nurses. The purpose of this study is to investigate the health care services provided to COVID-19 patients at home-setting by nurses. Methods: This study is a descriptive quantitative study with a sample size of seventy-four nurses. The nurses claimed that they looked after more than 180 patients at the home setting. The data was collected through an online questionnaire format prepared by the researcher after an extensive literature review and discussion with the nurses who provided home care to COVID-19 patients. The researcher also utilized the guide-lines and data published on the World Health Organization (WHO), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) websites for constructing the tool. Data was collected through Google Forms from 1st January 2022 to 29th March 2022. Results: Of the seventy-four nurses that completed the questionnaire, half held a bachelor’s degree in nursing. The nurses reported caring for more than 180 patients in total with 37.8% of nurses caring for one patient. More than half (52.7%) of patients were aged 50-64 years. The results of the study showed that the home care included health assessment, nursing intervention, evaluation, reassessment, and practicing preventive measures. Conclusion: Depending on the data received from the nurses, COVID-19 patients in home setting received holistic nursing care and patients were under close and constant monitoring.