Home health care nurses are another of the sub groups that nurses fall into. If you prefer you could say it’s another of the specialties that you could take up within the profession. As with all forms of registered nursing, a college degree is not required but it certainly helps. In fact, many people who come into nursing with out a college degree, through some of the vocational training schemes, for example, find that they will go on to get their BSN, as it makes both promotion and the more interesting jobs so much easier to get.

Home health care nurses go into peoples’ homes (as you might expect) and help them with the aftermath of surgery, accidents and childbirth (which in itself is sometimes an accident, ho, ho). The actual treatment is all fairly regular: it has to be, otherwise these patients would still be in hospital. But there are two things that make it really quite interesting. The first is that, unless you’re working in a very large city, the different patients will all be being treated for different things: so there’s a variation in what you’ll actually be doing. The second of course is that as you’re visiting people in their homes you’ll be in several different places each day.

As to our EQSQ personality tests, like almost all nursing, you’ll both enjoy it more and be better at this job if you are at the empathizing, or female brain end of the results. It’s not quite as extreme as the next specialty that we’re going to discuss, hospice nursing, but the basics of nursing people in their homes do mean that a healthy dose of empathy will be required.