President's Message -
IHCNO leaders Mary Narayan, Marilyn Harris, and I represented IHCNO at the World Hospital at Home Congress (WHAHC) on March 27-29, 2025, in Vienna Austria. About 730 nurses, physicians, and other clinicians and administrators attended the annual conference.
Hospital at Home nurses are employed by hospitals and make home visits to medically stable patients who need acute care. WHAHC defines the care as, “Hospital at Home/Hospital in the Home (HaH/HITH) is an acute clinical service that takes staff, equipment, technologies, medication, and skills usually provided in hospitals and delivers that hospital care to selected people in their homes or in nursing homes. It substitutes for acute inpatient hospital care. It’s goal is to improve the lives of sick people who need hospitals, by changing the culture of hospitals to deliver hospital-level care at home.”
We presented a poster describing IHCNO projects and activities, inviting Hospital at Home nurses to join IHCNO, the only nursing organization in the world dedicated to home-based nursing practice, education, research, and advocacy. I also presented a poster about my theoretical framework (Hinck, 2022) introducing the distinguishing characteristics of home-based nursing that are the autonomous role of the nurse, patient authority in the home, patient self-management, caregiver collaboration, and nurse leadership of the interprofessional team.
In addition, I spoke in a panel presentation where I described the IHCNO study defining the scope and standards of professional home-based nursing practice (Narayan et al 2024). There was much interest in the study, and we had the opportunity to share additional information during individual discussions with conference participants. Although hospital at home programs have been available in many countries for more than a decade, they are still in the early stages of defining how providing care in the home is different than, and more than, acute medical care in a non-hospital setting. Several conference presentations by physicians and interdisciplinary teams explored standards of practice and competencies. IHCNO shared our well-developed research findings and made a valuable contribution to the conference.
Hinck, S.M. (2022). A theoretical foundation for home-based professional nursing practice. Home Healthcare Now, 40(3), 146-153. doi: 10:1097/NHH.0000000000001063
Narayan, M.C., Hinck, S., & Harris, M.D. (2024). Developing international scope and standards for high-quality home-based nursing practice. Nursing 2024, 54(12), 37-40. doi: 10:1097/NSG.0000000000000098
Susan Hinck, PhD, APRN, GCNS-BC
President, International Home Care Nurses Organization
Thank you to everyone who participated in our 2025 Webinar Series.
Registration is still available for On-Demand recordings and CE credits.
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International Guidelines
The International Guidelines for Home Health Nursing Practice (Guidelines) are guiding principles for nurses who aspire to provide excellent care to patients in their homes. The Guidelines were developed by international home care nurses from diverse countries to provide guidance to nurses around the globe who seek to develop their professional home healthcare practice and performance.
