There are many reasons why people may require home care. Sometimes, a temporary injury such as an unfortunate fall at home may leave us or our loved ones with mobility difficulties for a period of time. That's when quality home care and caregiving is of utmost importance for recovery to take place smoothly and successfully, in the comfort of the patient's home.

Whether you're looking to enter the healthcare sector by starting with caregiving, or interested in an alternative career path from being a nurse in the hospital, being a home caregiver or nurse may just be the right fit for you. Find out more about the role of a professional home caregiver here and home nurse here.

Here are some reasons why you should consider a career as a home care nurse or caregiver.

Being a freelance home care nurse or caregiver can mean more freedom over your work schedule as you are free from the fixed working hours of most hospitals, nursing homes, and other healthcare facilities.

As a freelance caregiver or nurse, you will not be tied down to a minimum commitment time period and you may choose to work as much or as little as you like. Home care visits can range from 1 hour to 12 hours, with breaks in between. This means that if you are a mother who wants to earn some income, but not miss out on your children's important milestones – this would be the perfect job for you. Working mothers love the flexibility of a freelance job as it allows them to balance out their time between work and family.

Being a home care nurse would also be great for nurses who are looking to take a break from hospital nursing, while being a home caregiver would be perfect for those who are looking to enter the healthcare industry, but would like to first gain some hands-on, entry-level job experience.

If you're ready for more permanent work arrangements, you will also have the option to transition to work part-time on a rostered schedule or to full-time work arrangements.

Homage's Care Pros stand to enjoy competitive remuneration rates that are on par with or higher than healthcare industry standards in Singapore. Some of our Care Pros have even earned over $5,000 a month.

Enrolled nurses with Nitec degrees can expect earnings of up to $23 per hour while registered nurses with Nursing degrees can expect earnings of up to $27 per hour working as Homage Care Pros. On top of that, Homage also offers attractive incentives if you take up assignments on public holidays, night assignments, or more challenging assignments due to a further location or job scope.

If you work only ten hours a week as a Homage Care Pro, you can stand to earn more than $920 per month if you're an enrolled nurse or more than $1080 per month if you're a registered nurse. This is highly competitive considering that nurses in Singapore typically only earn about $10-$15 per hour despite working 38-42 hours per week.

In a traditional hospital or hospice, healthcare workers may be expected to handle quite a fair bit of administrative work and other tasks that fall outside the purview of healthcare and nursing work. On top of that, due to the changing of shifts, making detailed and thorough patient records is also crucial such that the worker taking over your shift will know what they need to do for their shift.

While administrative work is hard to run away from especially in big organisations, being a home healthcare worker allows you to focus entirely on the meaningful and fulfilling work of caring for others, without having to worry about other miscellaneous tasks that will inevitably take up more of your time from your main role.

As a home care nurse or caregiver, you will have the opportunity to work across a wide variety of care settings that go beyond just homes such as day care centres, nursing homes, and hospitals. You have the flexibility to try out the different care settings that you think suits you best, before committing to one for the longer term.

This also means that home care works are able to care for a diverse range of patients from various backgrounds and age groups. From wound care, to mobility needs, working as a home care worker will grant you more exciting and rewarding opportunities compared to traditional healthcare environments.

The environment of hospitals and other traditional healthcare settings can sometimes be limiting with regard to the kind of patient relationships that you can build with care recipients.

Hospital stays are after all, meant to be temporary. With the constant admission and discharging of patients in hospitals and the sheer volume of patients coming in on a daily basis, it can be challenging to forge meaningful relationships with your patients as a healthcare worker in traditional healthcare settings, especially when you are rushing from ward to ward.

As a home care worker, however, you can dedicate your time and services to a smaller number of care recipients that are within your comfort range, allowing you to deliver a much higher standard of service and forge stronger bonds with your care recipients. You are also better able to engage with your care recipients on a much more regular basis than in traditional healthcare settings. Being able to help care recipients with daily tasks such as grocery shopping gives you plenty of time and opportunity to build rapport and forge meaningful relationships with them.

In a private home setting, nurses and caregivers must act quickly and independently to fulfil the needs of their care recipients, allowing one to practise his/her problem-solving and creativity skills, while training to be more mentally agile and independent as well. These are all skills that are highly-valued in any workplace, and you will certainly rack up a ton of diverse and useful experiences you can share in your future interviews.

That's not to mean that home nurses and caregivers are left to fend for themselves. At Homage, our Care Pros are provided with sufficient support and guidance throughout their career journey, and the wellness and safety of our Care Pros are always of utmost importance to us.

The skills you acquire as a home care worker are also highly transferable across a lot of different settings. For example, learning to be patient and understanding with difficult care recipients can be a valuable experience for training your empathy and client-servicing skills in general, putting you in good position to pursue future professional experiences in sectors that have roles with similar client-facing demands. It can also push you to improve your communication skills as you deal with a variety of care recipients with different communication needs, allowing you to excel in your people skills.

Working in home care is a great way for you to make a visible and tangible impact on others' lives. From the vantage point of working with people who need care in their homes and assisting them with achieving the best they can in their daily lives, home care nurses and caregivers are able to see the outsized impact that their work has on the lives of the people they care for and their families. With caregiver burnout becoming more commonplace in Singapore, you will also be alleviating the burdens of your patients' families and helping them lead a better life as well.

Often, care recipients of home care require an intimate and sustained level of care within their home. As a home care nurse or caregiver, you'll be able to provide such care for care recipients in their own environment and truly extend healthcare beyond the doctor's office and into their lives. Many of Homage's Care Pros foster deep and close relationships with the people they care for that care visits don't feel like work to them – in fact, it feels more like they are visiting a close friend or a loved one.

The demand for home care nursing and caregiving is only set to increase in Singapore given the rising aged population seeing that the elderly share of the resident population from 1970-2021 has increased from 3.4% to 16%.

As societal attitudes shift and normalise in favour towards home care as opposed to health care in traditional hospital settings, home care nurses and caregivers will only find themselves more in demand than ever. Homage Care Pros therefore can expect to enjoy a steady stream of employment opportunities and assignments, whether they're freelancing or working on a part-time or full-time basis.

To be a professional caregiver, formal qualifications are not the deciding or most important factor. What's most important is the right heart and mind dedicated to helping those in need. At Homage, our professional caregivers typically help families with activities of daily living (ADLs) such as showering and toileting, transport/medical escorting, medication reminders, companionship and check-in visits, all of which do not require specialised medical knowledge or experience.

As for home care nurses, a valid Singapore Nursing Board (SNB) license, and a valid Basic Cardiac Life Support + Automated External Defibrillator (BCLS + AED) certificate will be needed, certifications that most nurses would already have.

One last added perk about being a home care nurse or caregiver is that you will have a career that is truly worthy of respect.

Home care nursing and caregiving not only requires patience, but also a certain level of humility and willingness to endure what can be difficult or uncomfortable situations, in order to help care recipients live dignified and worthy lives.

Even though a career in home care may not be the most glamorous of jobs, it is certainly a job that everyone respects.