Home health care: modalities that ground its practice

Abstract

Home health care is increasing all around Brazil and emerges as a new work place for health professionals, in public and in the private services. In Brazil home health care includes different kinds of assistance, four of those were studied in this project. Each one of the concepts or branches of home health care has specific purposes, objectives and activities. A review of the literature was undertaken in order to identify and to analyze these concepts. It is important that health professionals know these concepts because they will probably face them, even when they do not act directly in home care. This knowledge is also relevant for the quality and appropriateness of the provision of the services considering the inherent specificities.