The home and palliative care nurse panel discussion kicks off with an introduction of our panelist Elaine D. Stephens, Executive Vice President of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice, she’s also Former Chair of the Home Healthcare Nurses Association. Also joining us on the home healthcare nursing panel is Barbara Burgess, chief executive officer of Pathways Home Health, Hospice & Private Duty.

Nursing Notes Live is an audio extension of the national award-winning monthly e-newsletter, Nursing Notes – which offers the latest industry news, trends and updates in nursing. You can subscribe to the e-newsletter at www.discovernursing.com. Each month’s Nursing Notes issue, hosted by nurse Jamie Davis, is accompanied by a select few episodes of Nursing Notes Live, which expands on the content and provides you greater insights into the topics presented in the e-newsletter. You can listen to previous episodes and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

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Jamie Davis: Hi, Barbara and Elaine, it’s great to have you both here on Nursing Notes Live and joining us on the show. We’re talking about home health care nursing this month. That’s an exciting topic with all the things going on with changes to healthcare and trying to keep people healthier at home. Before we get started with the meat of our discussion today, I thought I would ask each of you my traditional first question. And I guess we’ll start with you first, Barbara. Go ahead and let us know a little bit about why you wanted to become a nurse? What was it that drew you to this nursing profession?

Barbara Burgess: Well, I wanted to become a nurse early on. I can remember in my late teens. It’s really interesting. I don’t think I knew anyone personally that was a nurse, but I started out volunteering as a young teenager in a hospital. As some of you may remember as a candy striper. That gave me a feeling for that helping profession. We were allowed to go up onto the units and do certain things with the nurses. I was just very excited about it and thought it was something I was drawn to. So my desire started really quite early.

Elaine Stephens: I can’t believe this but – this is Elaine Stephens – but I also started as a candy striper, as a volunteer in a hospital. At that time, they did let us go up on the floors and actually do some really meaningful work with the patients. It was so exciting. So the idea that I could do this and impact directly and positively on the lives of others, and combine not just delivering care but teaching. That was a really important thing to me, the teaching people. That was very exciting. So I was very exciting about nursing and going into nursing and, very clear, this is what I wanted to do from the outset.

 Jamie: Elaine, why don’t you continue and tell us a little bit about your path in nursing, your educational path and your career path, that brought you into the specialty of home healthcare?

Elaine: Well, my nursing degree comes from Boston College and they provided me an outstanding base in nursing education. They divided nursing education into primary, secondary and tertiary interventions and then all the specialties within that. They also included teaching courses and leadership, change leadership, ethics, communication, values. I believe that made a huge difference in terms of my nursing education and then the excitement that I had about going into nursing. I then went on to work fulltime. And while I was working – I didn’t work very long in a hospital before. I wanted to go into community health and work for VNA. While I’m doing that, I attended BU Medical School and my concentration there was Health Systems in their School of Public Health. That included courses in legal, social and economic issues and issues that impact the healt...