home health care

Acting As Courteous Guests: How We Provide Home Health Care Services While Respecting Our Customers' Homes

by Mark Hamister, CEO

Inviting strangers into our homes can be difficult but necessary: home health care professionals, even if they are home health care professionals whose services are necessary to a proper recovery and rehabilitation.. We wonder: will they respect my personal space? Will they be there when I need them? Will they eat my food, rearrange my things, or do anything else that I have not offered or requested?

At Health Services of Northern New York, Inc. our goal is to perform home health care while fully respecting the fact that we are working within someone else’s private space. Our secret is extensive staff training based on the following principle: we are invited guests in someone else’s home and we must act as courteous guests at all times.

What does this mean at a practical level? Whether our nurses and nurse’s aides will be spending 30 minutes, a full day, or 30 days in a customer’s home, they sit down with their customers as soon as they arrive and discuss the customer’s needs and expectations. They are instructed to learn where it is acceptable for them to be and what rooms or spaces are off-limits. Our staff will agree with the customer on a place for the staff member to be while the customer is napping. This place should be within earshot of the customer, and our staff is not to leave it except to go to the restroom.

Courteous guests do not help themselves to anything in their host’s home. If they would like a glass of water, they ask for it. Our professionals are trained to ask if they may get themselves a glass of water and to offer one to the customer. When serving themselves they must never use good china, but rather whatever casual ware is available.

Courteous guests do not open the refrigerator or cupboards of their host’s home without asking, nor do they help themselves to food. Our staff is trained to always bring their own lunch and only to accept food if it is offered. They ask our customers what food they would like prepared and inquire where things are instead of just rummaging around.

We always remember that our customers themselves decide what goes on in their home. We ask what television programs they like, whether they would like us to turn up the heating or turn on the air conditioning, and what lighting they prefer. We respect their personal tastes: if we are providing help with dressing and personal grooming we ask our customers what they would like to wear each day and how they would like to be groomed.

There are also a few simple little words that a courteous guest must never forget: please and thank you. We repeatedly emphasize the importance of these golden words.

Finally, we must remember that we are in our customers’ homes in order to help: we must be constantly offering and providing aid. We must ask “is there anything else I can do for you?” at every opportunity. If we can do this while always acting as a courteous guest, we will be able to accomplish our goal of providing health services while respecting our customer’s personal and private space.

Health Services of Northern New York, Inc. is a dynamic, people-oriented private health care company that specializes in the following areas:

Private duty home health care services for adults and children
Rehabilitative and restorative home health care to recover from surgery, illness, or injury
Physical Therapy and nursing staffing services for individuals and institutions.

HSNNY is located at: 56 Market Street, Potsdam, New York, 13676 Telephone: 315-265-4065

HSNNY Web Site: www.hsnny.com