by James Coburn – staff writer
When a patient lives with congestive heart failure and is on a sodium restricted diet, Amanda Jaime, LPN, might notice if their trash shows they had canned soup and crackers for lunch.
“You’re in the home and you can see what the patients are really like,” said Jaime of Accentra Home Health, located in Edmond. “You can see what they’re really doing instead of what they tell their doctors they are doing. You get to hold them a little bit more accountable for their health when seeing them on a weekly basis or however often you are in the home.”
Accentra congratulated Jaime in 2021 for being their first recipient of the Accentra Core Values Award.
“Several people that I worked with nominated me without my knowledge. And so that was nice, especially being recognized by my peers, not just management or anything, but it was people that I worked with,” she said. “I’ve worked with all these people for so long that they know me.”
Jaime said home health enables her to know patients better than she would if she worked in a hospital where patients come and go.
Jaime likes to visit with her clients to learn about their lives.
“They get to know you better, so they feel more comfortable and trusting to tell you, ‘No, I’m really not taking my medicine,’” she continued.
Jaime can tell if someone looks a little different when she greets them at their front door. She even discovered someone who had fallen before she arrived at their home. Accentra always calls the night before as a reminder to their patients that they have an appointment.
“If we can’t get a hold of them, we try to call the emergency contact. If we can’t get hold of them, we always do a drive by because there’s fear they’re on the floor,” Jaime explained.
If there has been a fall, she does a quick assessment to determine whether to call 911 emergency or if they need help standing up on their own.
“That also shows us in a home setting that maybe we need to get physical therapy involved to help them with strengthening,” she said.
Jaime always recommends to her patients to have a cell phone on them in case an emergency response is needed. There are also alert devices to wear that have proven to be handy in perilous situations.
Jaime has been loyal to Accentra Home Health for all of her 11-year nursing career. At age 17 she entered Platt College and chose Accentra Home Health upon her graduation.
The flexibility of home health appealed to her as a young mother with children. She could schedule home health appointments to accommodate taking her kids to and from school. Plus, she found a lot of cooperation among the nursing staff.
Jaime’s sister, Mary Pridemore, RN and Accentra Home Health administrator, helped to mentor her when she was fresh out of nursing school.
Pridemore had been a home health nurse and told Jaime she would enjoy getting to know her patients. Other LPNs with longevity in the field helped her as well.
One of her patients she became close to was on and off service, depending on her health. She passed away from muscular dystrophy after Jaime had been her nurse for more than five years. Physicians told her she would likely die before age 17, but died in her 50s.
“Getting to take care of her and seeing all the struggles she had to go through and overcame — that was touching to see,” Jaime said. “It was a sad thing about her.”
The woman could barely use her hands, so she would use voice commands on iPhone to communicate. (story continues below)
As seen in Oklahoma’s Nursing Times:
“She never gave up on her health,” Jaime said. “She tried to do everything to the very end.”
She ended up going on to hospice services and Jaime was there to comfort her at the end of her life.
“Being there and seeing her take her last breath and being able to do the final care with her and being there with the family was touching,” Jaime said.
It takes a special person to be a home health or hospice nurse, she said. Jaime admires hospice nurses but feels that it would be too difficult to turn her emotions off at day’s end.
“I would be in tears,” she said. “With home health, we teach them. We educate the patients and the family. And we do everything with that patient to get them as well as they can.”
For more information on Accentra Home Health visit: https://accentrahealthcare.com/
