Can I get nursing services at home?

00:00:00 Kate
Welcome to Age Old Problems: New Aged Care, a podcast by Helping Hand that offers information and advice to help you find and access the right aged care services. This podcast was recorded on Kaurna land.

00:00:22 Kate
Hello I’m your host, Kate Holland. Did you know that at home nursing services are available via Home Care Packages? This means you can skip a trip to the GP and have plenty of services delivered at home instead. In this episode of Age Old Problems: New Aged Care, I’m joined by Jess Bryant, Clinical Manager with Helping Hand who is highly knowledgeable on what’s available to whom and how to access it. Welcome Jess.

00:00:43 Jess
Hi.

00:00:44 Kate
So Jess tell me about your role at Helping Hand. What does that involve?

00:00:46 Jess
I’m the Clinical Manager for Home Care Services, and that involves looking after all the nursing services for home care clients.

00:00:51 Kate
So those nursing services include at home nursing services as well, don’t they?

00:00:58 Jess
Yes.

00:00:59 Kate
Are you able to tell me a little bit about the areas in which Helping Hand offers at home nursing services?

00:01:04 Jess
So our nurses come out to your home, and they can assist you with things like wound care, medication assistance, whether that just be from prompting to actual administration, insulin administration and diabetes management, continence assessments, assessments to help get dementia supplements through their packages, we do skin checks, general wellbeing – which can involve your blood pressure monitoring, pulse, and all those types of things that you would normally go to the doctor for – we can do them at home to prevent you having to go that extra trip to the doctor.

00:01:34 Kate
They sound like excellent services. So who is eligible to receive these services?

00:01:40 Jess
So any client that’s on a Home Care Package with Helping Hand, any Commonwealth Home Support Programme participants, and the general public can pay a fee for service as well.

00:01:50 Kate
So do you find that many people are aware that at home nursing services are available to them?

00:01:56 Jess
No, I don’t believe many of our clients are either. Our Home Care Coordinators will actually liaise with us to refer them through to nursing services.

00:02:05 Kate
The services that are given to people, do they then liaise with their GP as well? Is there kind of a crossover between the two?

00:02:07 Jess
Yep. So if it’s anything like wound care, medication management, the nursing team can also assist with that. We can come out to the doctor with the clients, or we can just phone them or email them to let them know what we require to help their clients stay in their home longer.

00:02:23 Kate
And unlike some other organisations, the nursing staff that work with clients at Helping Hand, they are all Helping Hand staff themselves, aren’t they?

00:02:30 Jess
Yes, we have a team of nurses across metro, Whyalla, Port Pirie and Clare, and they’re all Helping Hand employees.

00:02:37 Kate
Obviously people will still have their own GP. Are the services that are provided through the nurses, is that information then coordinated and sent through to their GP?

00:02:44 Jess
Yes. So we will email through to GPs, call GPs, or sometimes go with clients to their GP. This is so that we can have that continuity of care for our clients.

00:02:54 Kate
So when you have a first appointment with a client, what would you generally run through with them when they’re going to start accessing these services?

00:02:59 Jess
So we would go in and we would do an initial assessment, depending on the service type, you know could be a medication assessment, or a skin assessment if it’s a wound, and, you know, many other types of assessments that we have. We introduce ourselves, we go through what they would like out of their care, what their goals are, and then we work with them to achieve those goals.

00:03:17 Kate
Will they have a continuity of nursing staff coming to them? Do they have someone allocated to them or does that change?

00:03:23 Jess
Yep, in metro we have a small team of nurses that you will generally get, either one or two or three of the same nurses. Obviously that can change when staff have leave, but you will see the same faces and hear the same names when we’re coming out to see you.

00:03:36 Kate
Yeah, which would make people feel very comfortable, I’m sure. What are some of the other benefits of having Helping Hand come to you and having it at home as opposed to having to go out to a GP?

00:03:45 Jess
You don’t have to run around and make times to get appointments, or lifts if you’re not able to drive. We come out to see you and we can talk with the GP so that we still get that continuity of care. If we think you need to see the GP, we do refer you in to the GP as well. So it’s just easier.

00:04:05 Kate
So I’m sure you have lots of good examples of things that you’ve offered, but do you have a particular story that stands out where you’ve helped a family in a way that perhaps they would not have expected that they could have improved through at home nursing?

00:04:13 Jess
Yeah. So we see a lot of carer stress as nurses when we’re going in, whether it be husbands or children of, you know, their mother – looking after them, helping them with simple tasks, just feeling like it’s too much for them. So we had a particular lady who her daughter was looking after her. A lot of carer stress happening. We discussed with the daughter around, you know, what is it that’s causing you this stress and how can we help? And we found out that it was just the medication that she was having a lot of issue with about making sure it was correct, making sure it was the right time, making sure she was there for her mum. So we offered nursing support. We did a medication assessment. We spoke with the GP, got the list of medications and set that up to do twice daily medication so the daughter could actually just go in and be a daughter and not have to go in and worry about medications and managing this for mum as well.

00:05:01 Kate
So it’s not always actually medical help on the person, it’s also providing support. I’m guessing that maybe some people don’t know that nurses actually have this broader skill set, and sort of permission to do what they can do, would that be right?

00:05:13 Jess
Yeah. So the GP’s will tell us exactly what they’re needing for their client once we set a goal plan up, and then we just work with them and we feedback to them if there’s anything that’s outside of the norm for the client.

00:05:24 Kate
So what changes are on the way for nursing? I get the impression that some things are changing. Where do you see it heading in the future, particularly nursing at home?

00:05:34 Jess
So nursing with the new Support At Home that’s coming through will be growing. There’s a big clinical aspect on there, where Helping Hand are currently looking at getting AINs, which Assistant in Nursing, so it will be an upskilled worker that can do basic nursing skills, to be able to streamline the process and minimise wait times. We’re also looking at getting more involved in the palliative care area because there is grants that are coming through for Support At Home, and that will be helping to keep people in their homes longer, which is what the community is telling us that they need.

00:06:09 Kate
And Support At Home, that’s a government initiative?

00:06:11 Jess
Yes.

00:06:12 Kate
And the information of that is continuing to roll out.

00:06:13 Jess
Yes.

00:06:14 Kate
So would you suggest for people to find out more about that, or just to keep on top of it, to visit both the Helping Hand website and perhaps the government websites?

00:06:22 Jess
Definitely. We’re getting new news every day.

00:06:24 Kate
we’ll make sure we have links to that as well. And obviously if people would prefer to talk to somebody, they can call Helping Hand and get information from a person?

00:06:29 Jess
Yep.

00:06:31 Kate
For somebody who is thinking about getting at home nursing, what would be a piece of advice that you would give them? What would be their starting point, and what would be the key reason you’d suggest they might pick it up?

00:06:40 Jess
If you’ve got any concerns around your health, if you are wanting to promote your health and stay at home longer, we can come out and just assist you in those things that you might normally go to the doctor for, or that you know families can sometimes say that you know you shouldn’t be at home anymore. But we can actually help stabilise things and keep you at home for that little bit longer than what the normal trajectory might have been.

00:07:02 Kate
So obviously, if somebody has an issue arise, they would call their GP and try and make an appointment. Is it the same sort of thing? If they have something that suddenly appears and they need help, can they then contact their at home nursing staff to come and attend to them?

00:07:11 Jess
Yep. So anyone with a Home Care Package can contact their coordinator, request to have nursing in place. The coordinator will then send a referral through and we will call to contact you, make an appointment, set that up. If we have a Commonwealth Home Support Programme client, they can get the codes from My Aged Care and then they can contact Helping Hand and we can set them up for a visit as soon as possible as well.
00:07:38 Kate
Sounds incredibly beneficial and I think I would like home nursing to come to my house so I didn’t have to try and get in the queue for an appointment too! Thank you so much for talking to us about it.

00:07:50 Jess
Thank you.

00:07:51 Kate
For more information on Helping Hand and their services please head to www.helpinghand.org.au or call Helping Hand directly on 1300 653 600./s