Home Health Aide On The Go In Service Lessons Vol 2 Issue 3 The Patient With Bowel Incontinence

This lesson on Patients with Bowel Incontinence includes a complete training packet. Each in-service packet takes approximately one hour to complete and fully meets the Medicare in-service training requirements. As aides need training, you can make as many copies as you want - there's no restriction when used with aides assigned from your office location. Remember that Home Health Aides must have 12 hours of in-service training every year. LESSON OBJECTIVES Upon completion of this program, the home health aide will be able to: * Define bowel incontinence * Name two predisposing factors that may lead to bowel incontinence * List two goals of a bowel training program * List three components of a bowel training program OVERVIEW Fecal incontinence affects more than 6.5 million Americans. It is more common in women than in men, and its prevalence increases in older individuals. Fecal incontinence, along with its toll on caregivers is a major factor in the decision to place a family member in a nursing facility. Bowel incontinence frequency is a data element in the OASIS(tm) data collection requirements for patients receiving skilled care. Incontinence that occurs at least once per week increases points in the clinical severity dimension for determining Medicare episode payments. Improvement in bowel incontinence is one of the outcomes reported in the Outcome-based Quality Improvement (OBQI) reports that homecare agencies should use to guide performance improvement activities. Activities designed to decrease the incidence of bowel incontinence (demonstrating improvement) must include home health aides, since incontinence is one of the reasons for providing home health aide services to patients. Thus it is very important that aides have an understanding of bowel incontinence and the components of bowel training.