Home nursing supports: No place like home to heal
Ciarán McCormack photographed at his home in Bree, Co.Wexford with his dog Holly. Photo; Mary Browne
While in hospital last year recovering from sepsis following a hip replacement, Ciarán McCormack first learned that his health insurer provided a home nursing support service.
Because of the complications, he had already been in hospital for almost five weeks.
“I was initially in isolation in hospital for a week because I’d tested positive for covid and then, with the sepsis, they were monitoring me and administering IV antibiotics every day to try to clear the infection.
“It was a very slow process. I was getting fairly fed up, to be honest, because I live in Wexford and I was in hospital in Dublin.
My wife and kids (aged 19, 16, and 13) were at home and could only make occasional visits to me. Hospital can be quite a lonely place when you’re on your own.”
However, a chance comment from a nurse on his ward led McCormack to discover Health in the Home run by his insurer, Irish Life Health.
Once his eligibility for the service was confirmed, he was discharged from hospital and went home, where his in-home nursing care took over.
“I had my antibiotic on the Friday in the hospital and then, on Saturday morning, I started with the [home] service. The transition was seamless.
When I got home, the team had already delivered the fridge where my antibiotics had to be stored and the medication was in it,” he says.
The home-care team visited him for over five weeks.
This year, he was back in hospital for another hip replacement. There were more complications when it was discovered he had a fungal infection and he had to remain in hospital for another five weeks while it cleared.
He was discharged back into the home-care nursing service again.
Elaine Storey is one of the original community nurse advisers with the Health in the Home service. She is based in Leinster and regularly checks in with Ciaran at his home in Enniscorthy.
“The service is available to patients who are stable but still need medical care. They’re not high-risk. Before a patient is approved, we check their vital signs — blood pressure, heart rate, temperature. We’ll also look for recent blood work results to make sure there’s nothing out of order. Patients with normal vital signs and bloods are usually good candidates for the service.”
Irish Life’s Health in the Home service was launched in July 2021 in Leinster in association with TCP Homecare.
It has since been expanded to Munster. Five nurses are in Leinster and three in Munster. The home care team offers services, including checking vital signs, administering IV antibiotics, wound care, chemo disconnects, port flushes, and phlebotomy services.
Significantly, the in-home nursing team has a direct line to each patient’s consultant and maintains regular contact with them.
“When we’re with the patient, we have all their details on our tablet device and various checklists for different services.
For example, with Ciarán, we have two checklists — wound care and his antibiotics. We go through these checklists during each visit and add notes.
These reports go directly to the consultant after each visit. If anything changes or if we’re concerned about anything, we have direct contact with the consultant, who might suggest the patient return to hospital to be reviewed.
TCP and Irish Life employ nurses with a minimum of three years of clinical nursing experience.
“That medical background is really important. The nurses must also be members of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland and receive ongoing training, refresher training, and hands-on training with new machines,” says Storey.
For 51-year-old McCormack, the move to in-home care was transformative.
“The nurses went above and beyond. They visited the house every day for five weeks to administer my antibiotic. They would text me the day before to let me know when they would be there, so there was always that consistency. It was normally the same time every day,” he says.
“And the way they interacted with me and my family, it wasn’t like a stranger coming into our home to give me my meds. They were so helpful and friendly.”
For Storey, being a community nurse is all about building relationships with patients and ensuring they are cared for in the comfort of their homes.
“Every time I visit a patient, I say to them, ‘I’m going to pretend this is the first visit.’ I ask, ‘How are you — mind, body, and soul?’ It’s about the whole person,” she says.
“We saw with Ciarán how much it meant to him to be at home. He’s so involved with his family and three kids. Being at home was certainly a contributing factor to his feeling better.”
While in hospital, McCormack says he missed key family milestones.
“I spent my wedding anniversary and my birthday in hospital. I missed confirmations, debs, and also important day-to-day moments. But this year, with Health in the Home, I was able to be there for my family at special times,” he says.
“Over the last two years, the service has been an absolute lifesaver.”
