Reflections on Home Health Work in St Croix

SeaView is a home care agency that services the entire island of St. Croix.  I was able to work alongside a registered nurse at the agency.  During my time at SeaView I went on 3 home visits, each of which were extremely different experiences.

Every morning I would spend about 90 minutes going through the patient’s charts.  From this information I formed an outline of major health concerns, potential goals of care, and any questions I had, and also filled out class required documents.  After going through the charts, the RN and I would discuss the patient and what her goals were for the visit we were about to go on.  We also discussed what my role would be during each home visit.  At the beginning of each visit I would get all of the client’s vital signs while she engaged with family members and the client to assess how things are going.

I quickly learned that an important skill to have in public health nursing is the ability to adapt and to be flexible.  Not a single one of the home visits went exactly as planned.  Yes we accomplished our major goals, in most cases…

And sometimes we would have to completely change what we had planned to do for a visit.  Regardless of the circumstances we endeavored to accomplish our objectives.