Association Between Years of Nursing Experience and Clinical Background Among Home Infusion Nurses: A Descriptive Workforce Assessment
Authors:   National Home Infusion Association, Haines Danell , Counce Jeannie , Charron Jennifer 
Published: February 2025

Introduction
Home infusion nursing involves caring for complex patients, thus incorporates clinical training from a variety of practice settings and requires skills and competence often recognized through certifications and past nursing experience. There is a void in research that describes the experience, education, and credentials specific to home infusion nurses. Therefore, the objective of this research was to determine the educational training and certifications that home infusion nurses possess. The secondary objective was to determine the demographics, years of nursing and home infusion experience, and future professional plans as a home infusion nurse. This information is needed to inform the health care professional and industry about the credentials, training, and experience needed to be a home infusion nurse.

Methodology
Survey methodology was used in this descriptive study. A questionnaire was developed by a committee of experienced home infusion nurses. The online non-incentivized survey was administered to home infusion nurses across the U.S. using the NHIA membership database and through other professional organizations that include home infusion nurses. Convenience sampling, a non-probability sampling method was used in this research.

Results
The mean age of the 524 home infusion nurses that completed the survey was 50.02 (SD=11.04). Females and males represented 90.65% and 7.06% of the respondents respectively. Of the nurses, 52.86% had a bachelor’s degree in nursing whereas 32.25% had an associate degree in nursing. Nurses had a total of 199 certifications among them with the most common being a Certified Registered Nurse Infusion held by 13.55% of the nurses. A home infusion nurse averages 22.38 (SD=11.61) years of nursing experience with 9.55 (SD=8.92) of the years coming from home infusion. Almost half of the nurses were medical surgical nurses prior to moving to home infusion nursing while 34.54% were intensive care unit (ICU) nurses. 47.14% of the nurses have either ED or ICU experience while 15.27% have both. Most (61.45%) of the nurses were not planning to leave the home infusion profession while 15.84% were planning to leave, primarily due to retirement.

Discussion
Home infusion nurses have strong educational foundations, come to home infusion from a variety of health care sectors, and have years of experience. More than half of home infusion nurses entered the field with experience in either medical-surgical, ICU, or ED. Most have 6 years or more of total nursing experience while 31.92% had 11-20 years of nursing experience. Once nurses enter the field, a large percentage of them remain in the industry for 10 years or more, and many nurses make home infusion a career choice. The home infusion nursing workforce is relatively stable with only 15.84% reporting they plan to leave the profession in the next 5 years and 65.60% of those indicating they plan to retire.

Conclusions
Home infusion nurses are prepared clinically and educationally to meet the challenges of complex patients in the home infusion setting. Furthermore, they have more years of experience than nurses working in other settings. Of the home infusion nurses surveyed, most have greater than 6 years of clinical nursing experience with backgrounds in ICU, ED, and medical surgical care in addition to numerous certifications. Nurses appear to be satisfied in their roles, given the small percentage of those who reported intentions of leaving. This durability—along with depth and breadth of experience—should benefit the industry into the future.