Healthcare Types and Length of Stay

• Length of stay refers to the number of days a person remains in a healthcare facility.

Types of Care

• Long-term care (LTC) is provided in long-term care facilities for individuals needing 24-hour skilled care.
• Skilled care involves medically necessary care from a skilled nurse or therapist.
• Acute care includes 24-hour skilled care given in hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers for people needing short-term, immediate care for illnesses and injuries.
• Subacute care is provided in hospitals or long-term care facilities for people needing less care compared to acute illnesses but more care than chronic illnesses.
• Outpatient care is given to people who have had treatments, procedures, or surgeries and need short-term skilled care.
• Rehabilitation involves care from specialists to restore or improve function after an illness or injury.
• Hospice care offers holistic, compassionate care to individuals with approximately six months or less to live.
• Health care is care that is provided in a person's home.
• Assisted living offers residences for those not needing 24-hour skilled care but require daily assistance.
• Adult day services provide care for those needing help during certain hours while not living at the facility.

Medical Conditions

• Terminal illness refers to a disease or condition that will eventually cause death.
• Chronic refers to long-term conditions
• Diagnoses are medical conditions determined by a doctor.
• ADLs (Activities of Daily Living) are daily personal care tasks like bathing, dressing, and caring for skin, nails, hair, teeth, eating, drinking, walking, transferring, and elimination.

Patient Focused Care

• Person-centered care emphasizes the individual's needs, individuality, and capabilities.
• Trauma-informed care emphasizes that trauma which people may have experienced in their lives and that their trauma, experiences, and preferences should be considered while providing care.

Important Legal and Ethical Information

• Abuse is defined as purposeful mistreatment causing physical, mental, or emotional pain or injury.
• Physical abuse involves any treatment, intentional or not, that causes harm to a person's body.
• Psychological abuse is emotional harm caused by threatening, scaring, humiliating, intimidating, isolating, insulting, or treating someone as a child.
• Verbal abuse involves using spoken or written words, pictures, or gestures to threaten, embarrass, or insult a person.
• Sexual abuse is nonconsensual sexual contact of any kind.
• Financial abuse involves the improper or illegal use of a person's money, possessions, property, or assets.
• Assault is a threat to harm someone, causing fear of being harmed.
• Battery is intentionally touching someone without their consent.
• False imprisonment is unlawfully restraining someone, affecting their freedom of movement, and includes the threat of physical restraint.
• Involuntary seclusion involves separating a person from others against their will.
• Workplace violence includes verbal, physical, or sexual abuse of staff by other staff members, residents, or visitors.
• Sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances or behavior creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.
• Substance abuse involves the repeated use of legal or illegal substances in a way harmful to oneself or others.
• Neglect is the failure to provide needed care, resulting in physical, mental, or emotional harm.
• Negligence is an action, or lack of action, that results in unintended injury.
• Malpractice is injury due to professional misconduct through negligence, carelessness, or lack of skill.
• Chain of command refers to the line of authority within a facility.
• Liability means someone can be held responsible for harming another person.
• Ombudsman acts as a legal advocate for residents in long-term care facilities, helping resolve disputes and settle conflicts.
• Confidentiality is the legal and ethical principle of keeping information private.
• Scope of practice is the range of tasks healthcare providers are legally allowed to perform according to state or federal law.
• Informed consent is the process of a person making informed decisions about their health care with the doctor's help.

Government Regulations

• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a federal law that requires privacy and security of health information, with organizations taking special steps to protect it.
• Protected Health Information (PHI) includes name, address, telephone number, social security number, email address, and medical record number.
• OBRA (Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) is a federal law setting minimum standards for nursing assistant training, staffing requirements, resident assessment instructions, and information on residents’ rights.
• Medicare is a federal health insurance program for people 65 or older, who have certain disabilities or permanent kidney failure, or are ill and cannot work.
• Medicaid is a medical assistance program for people who have a low income, as well as for people with disabilities.

Care Processes

• Care plan is a plan developed for each resident to achieve certain goals, outlining the steps and tasks the care team must perform.
• Policy is a course of action taken every time a certain situation occurs.
• Procedure is a method or way of doing something.
• Minimum Data Set (MDS) is a detailed form with guidelines for assessing residents in long-term care facilities.
• Incident refers to an accident, problem, or unexpected event during the course of care that is not part of the normal routine in a healthcare facility.
• Cite refers to finding a problem through survey

Work Ethic

• Professionalism is behaving properly when working.
• Compassionate is being caring, concerned, considerate, empathetic, and understanding.
• Laws are rules set by the government to help people live peacefully together and to ensure safety.
• Empathy is identifying with the feelings of others.
• Sympathy is sharing in the feelings and difficulties of others.
• Tactful is showing sensitivity and having a sense of what is appropriate when dealing with others.
• Conscientious is being guided by a sense of right and wrong; principled.
• Ethics refers to the knowledge of right and wrong.

Other Terms

• Professional relates to work or a job
• Personal relates to life outside one's job, such as family, friends, and home life.
• Residents' Rights are numerous rights identified in the OBRA law about how residents must be treated while living in a care facility; they provide an ethical code of conduct for healthcare workers.
• Assistive devices are special equipment that helps a person who is ill or disabled to perform activities of daily living.
• Charting refers to documenting information and observations about residents.