If you’re tired of the hospital rat race or the repetitive routine of a skilled nursing facility or long-term care facility and wondering where you can find some enjoyment in your work again as an RN, LPN, or CNA, home health may be the perfect setting for you to thrive in.
Here are 12 advantages of home health nursing you may want to consider if you think it might be time to change nursing jobs.
If you’re like most nurses, you became a nurse because you care about people: their health, their families, their skills and interests, and what makes them thrive and grow.
However, caring for patients in an institutional setting such as a hospital often means we only get a glimpse of who a patient really is which limits our ability to care for them and meet their needs holistically. We’re just too busy running from one patient to the next to really get to know any more about our patients’ than their medical background and current medical needs.
If you long to make personal connections with your patients, home health nursing is the perfect place to do it. By going into people's homes, you’ll quickly learn about your patients' family connections, what they did (or do) for work, if they enjoy painting, or if they love music. You’ll learn all these things about your patients and more. And you’ll discover ways you can enrich your patients’ lives just by engaging them in conversations about what’s important to them aside from their medical conditions.
If you feel like it’s Groundhog Day every time you step foot into your workplace, it’s probably a good indication that you’re due for a change before burnout sets in. The saying “a change is as good as a rest” certainly holds true for nursing as well.
Even if you prefer to specialize in a certain area of nursing, getting outside the four walls of a hospital or long-term care facility can bring a breath of fresh air to your practice as well as your patients.
Most people prefer to be in their own home and are in better spirits when they’re in their own environment that they have control over. Being at home can truly downplay the “sick role” for patients and help them recover faster. It can also help turn the nurse/patient power relationship on its head since you’re providing care inside the patient’s home. This can make all the difference in helping patients feel empowered and like they can express their wants and needs more freely because you aren’t dashing in and out of their hospital room distracted by a thousand other patient issues.
Some nurses really enjoy a particular nursing specialty such as stoma care, wound care, trach care, mom and baby postpartum care, pediatrics, etc.
If you enjoy working in a specialized area of nursing but can’t seem to get your foot in the door, or if you want to spend more time honing in on your nursing specialty, home health nursing might be a great fit for you.
The reality is, most hospitals only have one postpartum unit and one pediatrics unit for young children. If you’ve been unsuccessful landing a job in one of the specialized nursing areas where you live and work, why not consider home health nursing? All these patients with special needs are eventually discharged home, many of them still needing highly specialized nursing care.
Imagine the unique challenges and rewards of helping these patients return to their lives at home as they continue to heal and need help returning to their everyday lives. With your nursing expertise, you can be the one that gets them back on their feet and thankful to be back home again.
One of the things that many nurses wish they could escape is workplace drama— even if they aren’t directly involved in it. Workplace and co-worker conflicts can eat away at your motivation and staff morale as quickly as a fast growing cancer. Like a drowning person, the negative people we work with drag us down so easily, even though we may want to help them.
If you feel your emotional and mental well-being is starting to suffer because of the people, politics, and conflicts you continually face at work, home health nursing can offer you the opportunity to leave that behind and restore your sanity.
The truth is, nursing is a career that can consume our lives—if we let it. Our employers, nurse managers, and fellow colleagues often live and breathe work, and we see them suffer the consequences of it.
If that wasn’t bad enough, they also often try to guilt or pressure us into working more than we want to or try to convince us to put up with intolerable work conditions. Why? Because as nurses, they say (or insinuate) that we should care more about our patients, our fellow colleagues, and our workplace than we do ourselves and our families. Of course, we all know this is wrong thinking but I have yet to meet a nurse who doesn’t acknowledge that this mindset exists in nursing.
You know there’s more to life than nursing. And outside of nursing, there are people who are important to you that you care about. If you want to start scheduling your nursing work around your life instead of vice versa, a home health nursing role can help you regain that work-life balance you’re missing.
If you crave more flexibility and autonomy in the work you do as a nurse, you’re not alone.
Harvard Business Review recently conducted a work study of 5,000 knowledge workers worldwide, asking what these workers would like from their future work arrangements. “59% of respondents reported that ‘flexibility’ is more important to them than salary or other benefits, and 77% said they would prefer to work for a company that gives them the flexibility to work from anywhere rather than fancy corporate headquarters.”
If you’re ready to get out of the sterile white hospital environment with the fluorescent lights and perpetually ringing call bells and alarms, home health nursing will have you breathing a sigh of relief in no time.
Working shift work in a hospital or long-term care facility, you usually have no say over what patients you’re assigned to care for. The nurse-in-charge often makes up the patient assignment and that’s that. Some nurses have noticed that if they have a personality conflict with the nurse-in-charge, they’ll end up with the least desirable and heaviest patient assignment workloads as well.
Again, this is where working in home health can be a real lifesaver. If there are specific patients you don’t want to work with for whatever reason, you can specify this and the home health company will assign you other patients. In home health, they want to keep you happy as an RN, LPN, or CNA so they will work hard to tailor patient assignments to meet your requests.
Not surprisingly, nurses who have more autonomy and independence in their practice (such as by working in home health) report being happier and more satisfied with their jobs.
An article by Western Governors University (WGU) explains “studies have shown that nurses who are granted more autonomy are happier in their work and report that having autonomy is more important to them than their work setting. They are more likely to feel respect, have confidence in their treatment plans, have stronger decision-making skills, and overall enhance the clinical experience for themselves and their coworkers.”
Even if you’re a great multitasker, being pulled in a million different directions at the same time as a nurse grows old real fast. Not only does it zap your energy, but it can start to make you feel resentful that so many responsibilities are falling on your shoulders at once. It can also feel defeating and like you’re not able to meet the requirements of your nursing job because you’re not able to meet everyone’s needs when they want.
One huge advantage of home health nursing is that you get to focus on just one patient (and their needs) at a time. Because of this, both you and the patient are likely to be much happier with the healthcare interaction and more likely to look forward to working together in the future.
The truth is, very few nurses thrive in the hectic and stressful environment of institutional healthcare. Sensory overload, numerous patients, and multiple competing demands for your time as a nurse can quickly cause fatigue, frustration, and burnout.
However, in home health, you usually work with just one patient at a time. If you’re working an extended shift in someone’s home, there’s often lots of opportunity for free time for you to sit back and relax, study, catch up on schoolwork, etc. And if you’re assigned to work with a home health patient to complete certain nursing tasks and then travel to the next patient, you’ll have some downtime to decompress and grab something to eat or drink while traveling to visit your next patient.
If you’ve ever worked in a hospital or skilled nursing facility, you’ll be very familiar with having to work mandatory overtime that you can’t say “No” to. Usually it’s because of chronic short staffing compounded by staff calling in sick. This means you’re left in charge of your patient load when your long shift is supposed to be over. You can’t leave these patients unattended because they’re dependent on (and paying for) nursing care and others for medical support.
The great thing about home health care is these patients are already living independently enough to be at home on their own. So after you work your assigned time with a home health client, you’re free to leave. No worries about being told you have to stay because your boss has no one to replace you. No worries you’ll have to cancel attending special events or family time you already had planned for after work, even though you really want to go.
And having to work 12-hour shifts starting early in the morning isn’t common in home health nursing—but those opportunities are available as well if you want them.
Last but not least, home health nursing also pays well compared to other nursing jobs that offer far less scheduling flexibility, much less autonomy and independence, a lot more stress, and a heavier workload.
For example, according to Glassdoor, the average salary for an RN working in home health in 2021 was $71,130/year, with the highest salary being $97,441/year. The lowest salary was $51,923/year, depending on geographic location.
LPNs earn an average salary of $56,533/year or $28.99/hour. Entry level LPNs in home health make approximately $47,110/year while experienced LPNs earn up to $78,000/year.
And home health aides earn an average yearly salary of $34,436 up to a high of approximately $57,871.
If you’re looking for a nursing job that you love, be sure to consider the advantages of being a home health nurse. You might be surprised how much you enjoy the change of scenery and patients. Home health nurses and aides are able to help their patients in ways that other nurses aren’t always able to—and they often enjoy better work-life balance because of it. Have you ever considered becoming a home health nurse?
Written by: Leona Werezak MN, BSN, RN
Leona Werezak MN, BSN, RN has worked as a nurse in a variety of positions at the bedside for 13 years and as a nurse manager. From there, she began teaching nursing in BSN programs for the next 20 years.
