One of the most common questions I get asked is “How can I find a private nurse who works for a trustworthy nurse concierge company to help care for me or my loved ones?” There are a few ways to approach this.
Many people don’t realize that they can hire a registered nurse outside of a hospital, surgical center, or doctor’s office. When insurance will not pay for home health or you don’t feel like home health is enough, the best way to hire a private nurse directly is through a nurse concierge company.
“Registered nurses have independent, interdependent and dependent functions inside and outside of the hospital.” Lois Lowry R.N., D.N.Sc, the late national nurse leader.
Registered nurses complete various assessments of a patient that encompass physical, psychosocial, spiritual, and emotional health. Typical functions include:
- Education
- Answering questions
- Listening to your fears and concerns
- Reassuring you after a diagnosis or treatment
- Assisting you after a surgical procedure or hospitalization
- Assisting with personal care
- Medication administration (IV injections, IV antibiotics, IM injections, subcutaneous injections, and pills)
- TPN, enteral nutrition
- Dressing changes, wound care, drain care, incision care
- Watching for signs and symptoms of worsening conditions
What Does a Private Nurse Do?
Nurses are teachers. They educate not only patients, but their family members as well. Nurses implement various measures designed to motivate, support, and teach patients and their loved ones. They complete these highly important activities through health education, healthcare system navigation and guidance. Nurses implement treatments prescribed by your medical team, and collaborate with other healthcare providers such as your primary care doctor, nutritionist, therapists, and more. They can communicate with your physician, advocate for you, and help you understand how to participate in your care. Registered nurses are the conduit between the healthcare system and the patient; your private nurse will help you reach your optimal healthcare goals.
Here are two questions are important to ask when choosing a nurse concierge company:
- What constitutes a high quality concierge nursing company?
- How can you determine if the company you connected with fits your specific healthcare needs?
Why Hire a Private Nurse From a Nurse Concierge Company?
Nurse concierge companies have done due diligence in hiring the registered nurses for their team. Due diligence includes detailed background checks and making sure insurance is carried by the company and each individual nurse. Secondly, the nurse concierge company has standards of practice for the care of their patients. The company ensures their nurses work within the scope of safe nursing practice, provides safe care to you and your loved ones. The company should have a social presence with legitimate testimonials.
4 Qualities You Should Look for In a Nurse Concierge Company
Let’s go back to the initial question, how can I find a private nurse? Private nurses work for nurse concierge companies. There are four company qualities to look for when evaluating a nurse concierge company and their registered nurse team:
- Advocacy
- Attentiveness
- Accessibility
- Ardency
These four qualities are key to your care after your surgery, hospitalization, and to assist you with preventative care or ongoing support for a chronic condition.
“Everyone deserves a nurse to help them navigate healthcare. It’s incredibly stressful. Even I need one to help with my own loved ones. ”
Jasmine Bhatti, Founder
Advocate
A registered nurse working for a high quality concierge nursing company is someone who will advocate for you. Nurses are deeply connected to the healthcare system and know how to help you navigate through a storm, whether you’re having surgery, are hospitalized, or facing healthcare issues. They know how to get you what you need, and who to connect you with.
Let’s say you’ve been diagnosed with colon cancer and need assistance finding the best colon cancer specialist.
A nurse advocate should be able to:
- Help you to find the best surgeon possible.
- Assist you and your primary care provider in getting connected with the best specialist or highest quality facility.
Your nurse advocate’s opinion regarding various doctors, facilities, and treatments are not tied to a specific hospital, surgeon or clinic, so they are unbiased. Not only is their opinion unbiased, but referrals from the registered nurses are vetted. Nurses work with many different providers. If the nurse is not familiar with resources that you need, they have a vast network of contacts who have worked with a provider or specific surgical center or facility. This opinion is worth its weight in gold. A nurse advocate can not only connect you with the right specialist or facility, but they can assist you with the right follow up as well.
High quality concierge nurses are connected within the healthcare system. This how they are able to assist you with navigating all of your healthcare needs. They will do everything they can to make sure you get the care and treatment you need, to help you live your best life. They can coordinate care across multiple teams of medical providers, and can even improve communication between these providers. It is not uncommon for specialists to not communicate effectively with each other. A concierge nurse by your side will facilitate this communication, saving time, frustration, and heartache.
Attentiveness
An attentive nurse is a healthcare professional that listens to you. A registered nurse is a highly regarded career coupled with compassion – a mixture of art and science. Many nurses go into healthcare because they love caring for others, and they want to positively impact lives. Caring for others is highly intimate, and something you do as a team, with you, the patient, at the center. This is why when you talk to your nurse, they should listen, not talk over you or talk down to you.
Your medical team is composed of highly educated healthcare professionals. It is not uncommon to feel like they don’t bring you along in the decision making process. This is really frustrating. That is why it’s important to have a registered nurse advocate who is not only an expert they:
- Understand you and your needs.
- Have built a collaborative relationship with you.
- Are trustworthy.
- Is someone you can openly communicate with.
A nurse concierge company that sends a nurse who doesn’t bring you along in the decision-making process is not a good fit. You should move on.
Accessible
Is your nurse concierge company accessible? Their accessibility will determine whether they can meet your needs. This is what accessibility might look like:
- Did your Spanish speaking father recently get a tracheostomy and needs a nurse that speaks Spanish?
- Do you need same day care?
- Are you coming from out of town for an elective surgery and need someone to care for you?
- Is your elective surgery plastic surgery and you need a highly specialized nurse with a plastic surgery background trained at a world renowned medical center?
- Do you live in a rural area and need a nurse to come out to assist you?
- Is there a service where my aging parents can be checked in on monthly?
- What type of nursing services are available; one-time visits or ongoing care for chronic conditions?
- Do you need a wellness check done by a healthcare professional on your relative?
Before you reach out to a company, write down your top 5 needs and know them before you approach nurse concierge companies.
Ardent
It is a known fact that healthcare changes every single day. Unfortunately, so much of what is learned in nursing school becomes irrelevant or changes completely by the time the nurse graduates.
One of the perks of working at a teaching hospital is that there are many innovative treatments. These treatments and procedures are so new that they haven’t been written about in medical journals yet. It can take years before new treatments are proven and trickle down into everyday medicine. The information trickle can take decades, which can be frustrating for patients and families. This is why it’s crucial for your concierge nurse to be proactive about reading the latest literature and staying sharp on healthcare information. I truly believe it’s important for your nurse concierge company to have registered nurses who are curious and have a passion for learning. If you’re not learning your knowledge is stagnant.
Round Up
So how do you find a nurse concierge company that has all of these qualities? No one company is going to fit all of your needs. When researching nurse concierge companies, keep ideal qualities in mind, but be flexible.
The following 10 questions to help you narrow your search.
- What are the credentials of your nurses and how many years have they been caring for patients?
- How long is the average visit with your patient and what does this care encompass – advocacy, in-person visits, virtual consults, follow ups, reviewing concerns, emails, etc.
- Do you provide ongoing care or one-off care?
- What does billing look like for each option?
- What is your culture like for your registered nurses in your company?
- Which conferences do you and your nurses try to attend each year?
- How much time, on average, do you spend per month staying informed of the latest research in healthcare overall, such as reading healthcare journals or books?
- Do your nurses have any specialty certifications like holistic care, stroke, critical care, or others?
- On average, how many years of experience do your registered nurses have under their belt?
- Are there any other things you would like prospective patients to know about you or your nurse concierge service?
If they are offended you’re asking, they’re not right for you.
Asking a nurse concierge company these questions will hopefully give you a good idea on whether their registered nurses are a good fit for you. These questions will help you connect with a private nurse that is attentive and will be a great advocate for you when navigating the healthcare system. In addition, asking your nurse concierge company these questions is a great litmus test – if they are offended you’re asking, they’re not right for you.
Finding the right concierge nurse may take some time. This guide will assist you in finding the right nurse concierge company that can match you with a registered nurse who fits your healthcare needs. If you’re in the Arizona area, you can reach out to Navi Nurses as a reputable nurse concierge company that can assist you with your healthcare needs.
Love and Best of Health
