In the article titled "Home Healthcare Internship and Preceptor Programs: One Organization's Journey," the importance and growing popularity of home healthcare was discussed. According to the article, nursing is shifting to community-based practice, stating that 43.8% of nurses work outside hospitals. The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis concludes that by 2020, the demand for home health services will require 248,848 RNs. In 2005 there were 152,622 RNs employed in home health nationwide. The VNA (Visiting Nurse Association) began to experience the effects of home health nursing shortages in 2002. On average, the agency was declining around 200 patients per month because of the lack of home health nurses and the rising turnover rate. An idea was proposed and eventually the pilot project took effect soon after and became a federally funded program. Essentially, the program consisted of 12 month internship program geared towards new graduate nurses, nurses returning to the workforce after completing a refresher program, and nurses transitioning to the specialty from a non-acute care setting. Preceptors initially volunteered and were provided with 20 hours of training. Before the program was implemented, nursing turnover rates were at 34%; after implementing the program for the first 12 months and after 24 months, the turnover rate declined to 10.4%. Also an additional 7,000 patients were seen per year since the start of the intern and preceptor programs.
The demand for home healthcare is obviously increasing; as nursing students, what can we do to improve the lack of concern regarding this nursing field?
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