Home Health Services
Origination of Home Health Nurses

Home health nursing, also known as domiciliary care is a type of health care in which professionals provide their assistance in the patient’s home instead of at the hospital, doctors office, or wherever their place of work may be. Before home health care originated which was around 1885, it was the families of the patients who played the role of a nurse by caring for their sick loved ones. In many cases, most of the illnesses or diseases became too severe for a family member to handle, which is when many home nurses started to become more in demand (National home care, n.d). The appearance of the home nurses put the families more at ease and took a huge weight off of their shoulders. Toward the late 1800’s, home nurses also helped new mothers and assisted them when it came to delivering their baby at home. Not only did these nurses help with the deliveries, they also educated the new-mothers about how to care for their newborns (National home care, n.d).
The Rise of Home Health Care By 1905, 455 home nurses had occupations through 171 different organizations (National home care, n.d). Many times, nurses had just one patient and stayed at their home and cared for them instead of going from house to house visiting different patients. By 1909, the number of home nurses grew very rapidly from 455 to 1,413, and the different organizations increased from 171 to 566 (National home care n.d). Even though home health nursing started around the year of 1885, it was around 1912 when the American Red Cross established visiting nurse service programs nationwide. This year specifically was in need of education on home hygiene and also caring for the ill was very high (American Red Cross, 2006). These rural nurse services involved nurses visiting patients on bicycle, horseback, and at times by car to provide their nursing care. Different diagnosis’ and diseases they dealt with were tuberculosis, typhoid influenza and trachoma (American Red Cross, 2006). Since these nurses also educated their patients, they provided information on sanitation, contagious and infectious diseases, and also immunization programs. As the number of rural home nurses continued to increase at 2,100 new employments nationwide, the amount of death rates decreased enormously. Instead of infectious diseases being the leading cause of death rates, persistent degenerative diseases became the main cause (American Red Cross, 2006).
Home Health Care Nurses Association