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 our volunteers!

This is Volunteer Appreciation Week, and IHCNO sends a big thank you to everyone involved with IHCNO - our board, our committees, and our task force, - all of who are volunteers.

You help us move our mission forward, and we couldn't succeed without you!

We Celebrate You!

The mission International Home Care Nurses Organization (IHCNO) is to develop and support a vibrant worldwide network of nurses who promote excellence in providing equitable care, nurture optimal health, and advance well-being to people in their homes.

The IHCNO recognizes the significant contributions of our members and non-members to global population health. Nurses providing healthcare in homes serve in an extraordinary capacity. We celebrate our specialty practice during International Nurses Day 2025.

Please, feel free to download this poster and share this poster with colleagues, agency leaders, and your professional organizations.

-IHCNO Advocacy committee

Welcome to our newest members!

These members have joined our international nursing community since January 1, 2025:

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