Perceived Challenges Faced by Nurses in Home Health Care Setting: A Qualitative Study

BACKGROUND: Home care has gradually become a nursing model for nursing care. The nurses’ experiences of challenges they have in home care have remained unknown. The aim of this study was to explore the hidden aspects of challenges related to home care in Iran. METHODS: This study was conducted to explore the challenges of home nursing care using a qualitative content analysis method. Purposeful and snowball sampling methods were used for sampling. The study was conducted from September 2016 to September 2017 in the provinces of Khorasan and Tehran in Iran. Semi-structured interviews were conducted on 33 nurses who were providing home care. After data saturation, the data were analyzed. RESULTS: The data analysis led to the development of five main categories of “difficult instances “, “economic problems”, “professional barriers”, “social difficulties”, and “bureaucratic tension”. CONCLUSION: The results of this study showed how nurses faced with a variety of challenges in home care and how they were different from hospitals. Facilitating the nursing processes, supporting home care, and recruiting nurses that had the potential to cope with the existing stressful factors and economic incentives can increase the quality of home care.