|
10 Tips on How to Prepare for Home Health Care
Making preparations for a home health care giver is a good way
to ease your parent's transition from total independence to needing
help with her daily life. Simple, clear lists will enable the
caregiver to handle her duties smoothly and create the least amount
of tension.
Here are 10 tips to help you prepare for home health care:
- Make a list of clearly written emergency phone numbers: police,
fire department, ambulance, physicians, dentist, and other health
care providers, pharmacist, home and work number of grown children,
number of a close neighbor.
- Make a list of helpful phone numbers: the market, library,
repairmen, clergymen, other relatives and grandchildren, friends.
- Make a list of your parent's likes and dislikes including
food preferences, TV programs, outings, and routines.
- Make a list of all medications and the times they are to be
taken. (Note: Home health aides do not administer medications.
They can, however, remind patients when to take their medications.)
- Make a list of what you would like accomplished on a daily
basis, such as eating meals, bathing, changing clothes, an exercise
regime, getting outdoors.
- Put a baby monitor next to your parent's bed or buy a telephone
with an intercom so that he can easily call for help.
- If your parent needs help moving from bed to chair or to the
bathroom, provide equipment that will make home care easier
-- electric bed, wheelchairs, walkers, bed rails.
- Make sure the home health care giver has a place to put her
belongings, food that suits her taste, and a place for privacy.
- Make a list of reminders of certain "house rules" such as
no smoking, religious observances, alcohol consumption, and
other concerns you or your parent might have.
- Encourage a good relationship between your parent and the
health care giver. Allow the care giver to express her own ways
of doing things and her own needs.
|
