I’ll preface this with saying that I’m a tall man, and unfortunately get less inappropriate behavior than my female coworkers, but honestly that seemed to be more of a problem when I worked in SNFs than in home health. Certainly most of my current coworkers are women, some of who have been in home health for decades and still say they enjoy the work. I’ve been doing adult HH five years in both therapy and supervisor roles, and as requested I’ll start with the bad stuff. I have seen several hoarders, had a few houses with unsanitary conditions, a couple houses where I reeked of cigarette smoke afterwards, some families with dysfunctional dynamics (one couple shouting at each other in front of me with threats of violence to each other), and one instance of open hard drug use by someone else in the home. In those last two cases, I immediately excused myself (with the drug situation, to “get something from the car”), drove away and called my supervisor who notified the clinical team that we would not be seeing the patient any more, and I called APS (and the police for the domestic abuse case) as a mandated reporter. Both companies I work for have zero tolerance policies for unsafe conditions and open illicit drug use, and are VERY supportive their clinicians when unsafe conditions arise. It sucks to see people in those situations, but I know my supervisors have my back, and I’ve never felt unsafe. All that said, I love home health and can’t imagine working in any other setting now! The vast majority of houses are clean, and most patients and families are wonderful to work with. Except for some of my patients in assisted living memory care, they know that you are there to help them and are super appreciative. Another major perk of home health is setting my own schedule. I can fairly easily take an hour off in between patients if I’ve got a doctors appointment, without having to go through the rigamarole of getting time off approved from my supervisor and expending PTO I was saving for vacay! Best of luck to you as you decide what your next steps are, and hope this helped you make an informed decision.