Cystic Fibrosis and Hospital in the Home (HITH)
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About HITH
Hospital in the Home (HITH) provides hospital care in the comfort of your own home or other suitable environment, instead of staying in a hospital bed. Nurses from the HITH team and your usual CF doctor will provide your care.
Nursing staff visit you at home or work daily or at least two times per week for up to one hour per visit. You will see your CF consultant or the CF registrar in clinic weekly or as needed. Nurses will visit between 7am to 9pm and you can phone 24 hours a day for support if you need. You can speak to a doctor from 8am to 10pm.
If you use HITH you are still considered an inpatient and the CF team will provide your care. Unfortunately there is no physiotherapy service available to visit you at home if you are admitted under HITH.
HITH competencies
Before you start HITH you will be asked if you are interested in completing intravenous (IV) antibiotic competencies so that you are able to give the antibiotics yourself and reduce the frequency of nursing visits. You will be shown by a nurse how to prepare the IV antibiotic and give it to yourself. You will then need to prepare and correctly give yourself the antibiotic three times under the supervision of a nurse on the ward or in the HITH clinic. Once you are assessed to be competent you will be able to go home on HITH.
If you require HITH again the competencies will need to be assessed every 12 months. If you are not comfortable giving your own medications we can arrange for the HITH nurses to visit once a day and give the antibiotics for you.
Eligibility criteria
- Clinical stability and suitability for HITH treatment. This decision is made between you and your doctor and is based on the ability of HITH to provide the same care to what you would receive in hospital. (For example, there is currently no allied health support on HITH, some antibiotics are more challenging to give at home etc.).
- Safe and suitable home or work environment
- Carer support if needed
- You must live within an area serviced by HITH, however this area is very large and HITH works in conjunction with a number of other regional hospitals in Victoria to deliver HITH to patients outside the immediate Monash Health area.
- You need to have both a functional and a risk assessment screen as part of the nursing assessment prior to transfer to HITH.
Please discuss with your doctors if you are interested in using HITH for all or part of your admission. The earlier you inform the team, the sooner you will be able to access the service