Professional and Patient Responsibilities in Home Health Care Nursing

Table of Contents:

1.Home Care Nursing: new meanings; more than women's work; interviews with home health care nurses; observation of home care nurses; patient interviews; hospital nurse interviews and observation; mail questionnaire

2.Who Enters Home Care: change in the life course; nursing gets medical; the cohort effect; transitions; return to ideals

3.What Home Health Care Nurses Do: distinctly nursing; little time for the real caring; making time in Waterview; opening a case – first visit with Ethel Langston; the usual at Waterview; re-visit to Mrs. Margeaux Evian; an exception among hospital care

4.Doctors and Nurses – and Patients: on hospital grounds; tensions unveiled; home care advantage; leaving the bother to nurses; the nurse's gain

5.Working Relationships: working together – the hospital mentality; the tensions of teamwork; on their own – home health care nursing; home care and technical support; a different kind of social support; less to say about supervisors; price of independence

6.Something to Look Forward to – Nurses' Relationships with Patients: the hospital-produced relationship; afraid of the future; a patient-centered relationship – the home health difference intimacy and its price importance of patient census; reliance on caregivers

7.Autonomy Revisited, New sources in Home Care: making sense of autonomy in home care; the impulse to disassociate; collective we fall

8.Conclusion: costs control home care nurses

References, Index