Home Health Care in the West and Middle East

Knowledge and Awareness of Nurses in Saudi Arabia Regarding Home Health

Abstract

This literature review examines the extent to which nurses in Saudi Arabia have sufficient knowledge and awareness of home health. The review shows that while some nurses have a high awareness and appreciation of home health services in the KSA, many nurses do not view it as a practical means of providing quality care. This is consistent with how nurses feel in other countries, such as the U.S. and the Netherlands, which is why many researchers suggest that more education be provided to help nurses both in the KSA and in other nations develop a better knowledge and awareness of how home health care can help the aging population.

Introduction

Home health has become more and more of a feature of quality care in hospitals around the world as health care providers seek to offer patients better access to care and more personalized and comfortable settings where health care can be received. Home health is an optimal solution for patients who cannot travel easily or who do not want to receive care in hospitals. It is especially helpful for elderly patients who have difficulty moving. As Almoajel (2016) points out, “home health care (HHC) services aim to help individuals to improve their function and live with greater independence and to assist the patient to remain at home, avoiding hospitalization or admission to long-term care institutions” (p. 106). Providing care home health care is especially important in Saudi Arabia as the elderly population is set to increase “from 1.6 million in 2015 to be 10 million by the end of 2050 and people aged 80 or more is expected to reach 1.6 million by the same year” (Almoajel, 2016, p. 106). For this reason, it is essential that nurses in Saudi Arabia have knowledge and awareness of the practice of home health. This literature will review the evidence of the extent to which nurses in the KSA have this knowledge and awareness and compare them with nurses in other parts of the world, including the U.S.A.

Literature Review

Almoajel, Al-Salem, Al-Ghunaim and Al-Amri (2016) note that “home healthcare services are expanding in Saudi Arabia at a rapid pace in order to meet the need of growing population of older adult and those with chronic illnesses and the quality of this service is various from hospital to another” (p. 72). The researchers surveyed home health care members to gauge the attitudes of nurses towards home health. They found that “86.5% of home health care members stated that the provided home health care service is an effective service that provides a noticeable improvement of patient’s condition” (Almoajel et al., 2016, p. 72), which indicates that there are positive attitudes among nurses in Saudi Arabia towards home health—at least among those who practice it and support this type of care. However, the study does not address the issue of how widely known and understood this type of care is among nurses in Saudi Arabia. A better study that does examine the extent of that knowledge is that conducted by Almoajel (2016) alone.

Almoajel (2016) conducted a survey of more than 100 nurses in Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to gather information on their experience and knowledge of home health care as well as their opinions towards this type of care as an alternative to traditional care. The researcher found that “the majority of home health care members stated they had a good and excellent knowledge” regarding home health (Almoajel, 2016, p. 106). However, more than half of those surveyed stated that they had a “lack of understanding of patient and his family regarding treatment and other medical instructions, and patients’ home were inappropriate to provide the services” (Almoajel, 2016, p. 106). These findings show that while there is good knowledge of home health among nurses in Saudi Arabia, the realistic likelihood of home health services being provided is low, as most nurses do not feel that many patients have an appropriate setting in their homes where adequate or quality care can be provided. This may indicate a poor attitude among nurses towards home health in spite of their good knowledge of home health services. The researcher recommends that more education be provided to both patients and nurses about the practicality of home health, how it can be conducted and what it can mean for health care in general.