Are you passionate about caring for the sick but hate working in hospitals? Maybe the lighting hurts your eyes, or the smell of cafeteria food nauseates you. Well then, perhaps a career as a home care nurse is for you.

As a home care nurse, you won't have to work a boring old nine-to-five schedule. In fact, you pretty much design your own hours without a bunch of doctors or management-types cramping your style. It's just you and your patients. You'll actually be able to connect with them as you visit their home, focus solely on what they need, and completely bypass the time crunch of visiting patient after patient in a hospital setting (source).

 

Like you want to just be another cog in the nurse-machine. Yeah, right. (Source)

A lot of your patients will be the elderly, disabled, and those with terminal cases. Therefore, an increasing number of people need short-term home care nursing (source).

Other than the obvious perks of independence, it's not much different than regular nursing. You'll still have to go through all those hoops to become a registered nurse. To start, you'll need a degree or nursing license (source).

It's worth the carpal tunnel from taking notes all day, though, because you'll be pretty comfortable financially. Home care nurses make an average of about $60,000 a year—and the more education you get, the more you can make that number grow (source).

The job itself is pretty straightforward: to begin with, you'll do a physical assessment of every new patient, creating the regimen of medications or treatments that they will need in order to do what The Bee Gees like to call "Stayin' Alive".

 

You can keep them alive, but you can't promise them the quality of life of the Bee Gees. No one lives as well as the Bee Gees. (Source)

Unlike a hospital nurse, however, you also have to assess a patient's home for hazards like bumpy rugs, steep stairs, or anything that might be tough for a sick or disabled person to negotiate. You'll make a care plan for your patients and, like all nurses, file paperwork. You don't have to do as much paperwork as a hospital nurse (they barely stop filling out forms), but you'll have to "admit" your patients to your health care and do an assessment after each visit (source).

Ultimately, your job is to continue what the doctor started. You'll check the patient's vitals, help manage their discomfort, and take care of anything and everything involving bodily fluids (you know, the stuff that makes us squeamish—needles, tubes, and the like). You'll also teach your patients what to do when you aren't around (like how to take their medication) and, most importantly, assure them of your availability if they need help with anything (source).

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