But before I go to the next part of my presentation, the organization of home care, I would like to see what happened to Mrs. Peterson. As we know she went to the outpatient department with the referral card of the general practitioner. There, after some examinations and tests, the orthopedist concludes that she needs surgery. So all appointment has to be made to have her admitted to hospital. At this point it is very well possible that she is faced with a waiting list. Because she is not an emergency case, she may have to wait for several months, perhaps even a year, before she can be admitted to hospital. After she has been admitted, she stays in hospital for about two weeks. Before she goes home, the nurses of the hospital have informed the home care organization of the discharge. The reason is, that Mrs. Peterson probably cannot perform the necessary tasks to look after herself and her house in a proper way, so she will need home help. If she has problems with the healing of the wound, she may also need some nursing care. Soon after discharge, the specialist sends a discharge letter to the general practitioner. As far as the home care is concerned, Mrs. Peterson will have a problem again. She will almost certainly receive the necessary nursing care, but the necessary home help is probably not available. She will therefore have to look for other ways to solve this problem. Now let's have a look at the home care organizations.
Screen 35 (contents: home care)
What is home care? We will answer this question in two ways.
Screen 36 (home care: contents)
First we will look at a general definition of home care by the National Council for Public Health and later on, in introducing the video, I will explain to you some different kinds of care
