Controversy exists as to the most effective way to provide home visiting services to high-risk pregnant women. Differences have been identified in how home visiting services are provided by nurses and community health workers (Korfmacher, 1999). Integrating nurses and community health workers into a team builds on the strengths of both providers and assures culturally sensitive, competency-based care management. Although there are many benefits, the support needed to maintain a team model also presents challenges. Provider-specific training and clinical paths have been developed that define and support the roles of each provider. Staff orientation, training and inservice education are crucial to quality care management and the successful implementation of services. Integrating the supervisory role of the nurse further enchances services and builds an effective team approach. To successfully fulfill the supervisory and care management roles, support and education of the nurse is essential. In addition, staff accountability has been established through a unit based leadership council that offers staff the opportunity for participatory management. The need for administrative oversight and the interaction among the nurse, community health workers and administrator will be discussed.
Information will presented from data collected during a four year study of nurse-community health worker teams providing services to Medicaid eligible pregnant women (N=306, subset of the larger study N=613). Data for this presentation will focus on a descriptive analysis of clients' needs and clients' perception of helpfulness with services received from the nurse-chw team. Examples of nurse-chw collaboration based on intensive qualitative interviews with be included.
Learning Objectives: By attending this session, the participant will be able to: 1) Describe the differences in the provision of home-visiting services made available by nurses and community health workers 2) Define the benefits and challenges of utilizing nurse-community health worker teams to provide home-visiting services 3) Develop a plan to enhance the suport and education of staff who are providing home-visiting and care management services
Keywords: Home Visiting, Case Management
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: none
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.