Long-term home nursing care – status of Polish research

Background. Long-term home nursing care (POD) has been used in Poland since 2004. This includes health care services offered to chronically ill and disabled persons, who don't qualify to hospitalization on in-patient wards, but they need systematic and intensive nursing care in home. Objectives. Presentation of the status of Polish research on long-term home nursing care in medical literature. Material and methods. The study used the method of analysis and critique of literature. A literature review was based on the following databases: Polish Medical Bibliography (1991-2014), Medline, Scopus, Polish Science (including People of Science) and Google Scholar Search. Using the key words: "long-term home nursing care", "long-term care", "nursing", "long-term", "long term home nursing care Poland", 35 reports were found. 26 publications were analyzed. Results. Publications on POD relate to organizational issues (46.2%), characteristics of home care patients (38.5%), standards of conduct (19.2%), the caregivers of patients of POD (7.7%) and work situation of nurses (3.8%). Authors of empirical papers and doctoral dissertations characterized mainly patients of POD. Review papers were related primarily to the organization and functioning of POD. One study presented the function of family doctor in referring patients to the POD. Conclusions. Issues of long-term home nursing care are rarely undertaken by researchers. There is a lack of publications, describing work situation of nurses as well as situation of POD providers. The role of a family doctor is rarely taken in the analysed studies.