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:
“This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“When any one of our relations was found to be a person of a very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)