Home care, (also referred to as domiciliary care or social care), is health care or supportive care provided in the patient's home by healthcare professionals (often referred to as home health care or formal care). Often, the term home care is used to distinguish non-medical care or custodial care, which is care that is provided by persons who are not nurses, doctors, or other licensed medical personnel, as opposed to home health care that is provided by licensed personnel.
Licensed personnel and other persons who assist the individual may be referred to as caregivers. Caregivers may help the individual with such daily tasks as bathing, eating, cleaning the home and preparing meals.
For terminally ill patients, home care may include hospice care. For patients recovering from surgery or illness, home care may include rehabilitative assistance.
Read more about Home Care: Research and Program Accreditation
Famous quotes containing the words home and/or care:
“To be motivated to sit at home and study, instead of going out and playing, children need a sense of themselves over time—they need to be able to picture themselves in the future.... If they can’t, then they’re simply reacting to daily events, responding to the needs of the moment—for pleasure, for affiliation, for acceptance.”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)
“Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,
With your harmonious choir
Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,
That my old care may cease....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)