Motivated by immortal love, appreciation, and gratitude, you spend some time thinking about “How can I take care of my senior parents at home?” As they grow older, questions start to think.
And then you start thinking about how I can care for My Senior Parents at Home? Is having an elderly resident nurse the best solution? Can I take care of them in the midst of my current responsibilities from a family or a job?
People become vulnerable to health and psychological crises when aging takes place, which greatly affects their beloved children. At that point, you – as a good family member or child who wants to start caring for his senior parents _ show your challenges and your desire to provide everything that’s best for your parents.
And that’s what our article is talking about. We’re always here to help you deliver everything best for the elderly by providing clear and simple instructions that will reference what you face with the challenges of caring for the elderly at home.
We will show you the top 13 ways that can make it easier for you to deal with and care for the elderly at home, which only requires you to be careful about better results with those you care about, and let’s start with:
1- Understand them thoroughly:
As they age, some daily habits and routines become difficult, such as moving between public places, arranging the house, or purchasing their necessities. So you must understand their lack of movement and avoid putting them under any kind of daily pressure while also being careful not to reflect a negative or hostile reaction because they do not want to move much.
On the other hand, you can ask them now and then if they want to move or run some errands. When caring for the senior parents at home, it’s preferable to show them some loving respect with a kind smile that expresses willingness, such as opening doors for them or offering to help them complete some errands.
Also, their feelings must be preserved, whether you decide to take care of the senior parents at homecare by yourself or through the help of an elderly caregiver, and the best things to consider are:
1) Emotions and feelings arise unexpectedly in the hearts of the senior parents.
2) Excessive emotional display or complete lack of emotional expression as they often want to be alone, as they could feel:
- Rage and sadness at being unable to control themselves.
- When caring for senior parents at home, the best thing to do is to acquire their advice and consult them on your matters, so they feel they are still important and trusted at homecare.
- Listen carefully.
- Always express gratitude and appreciation when communicating with them for better homecare.
- If the senior parents don’t interact with you during homecare do not give up; try again with kindness and gentleness.
Caring for the elderly at home presents challenges, but with a few simple things and plans, relying on some important assistance, such as home nursing services or hiring a resident nurse, you will find the issue feasible, beneficial, and easier than you thought.
2- Keep visits and interactions:
One of the best ways to take care of the elderly at home is to make periodic visits and keep communicating and interacting with them. Whether on holidays or ordinary days, it kills the feeling of loneliness in them and raises their morale.
One of the advantages of caring for the elderly at home is that it allows you to communicate with them at any time without committing to a specific time, as in hospitals or nursing homes.
While visiting them, you have to keep in mind some points:
– Not to disturb them greatly or by the noise of children, it is enough for you to sympathize with them.
– Don’t irritate them.
– During the visits, make sure to leave the house as I came, make no big changes, or just clean up.
– Speak properly with them and be sure to share your details.
-Have them share in family conversation and leave them an opportunity to speak without interrupting them.
3- Preparing the house for the elderly:
Whether you live alone or with senior parents, you should make things easier for them at homecare so that you can start with:
– Use a ramp to facilitate wheelchair movement and provide homecare for the elderly.
– Spacious doors suitable for wheelchair movement.
– Don’t put things on high shelves.
– Facilitate the process of lighting, especially night lighting for the elderly.
– Removal of excess cables and ropes that may obstruct their movement or bring them down.
4-Request support from specialists:
If you choose to homecare your senior parents at home, you have to think about every aspect, as having a nurses at home that allows you to have treatment at any time.
That includes health care, regular follow-up, and medical care. it can replace a hospital to provide easier homecare for the elderly.
5-Show some patience with them:
Being patient with them will make it easier to have a good relationship with your senior parents, especially when you show appreciation and acceptance. By this time, getting older makes them face poor physical ability. The elderly would be similar to children in their excessive need of care even concerning their daily routines such as eating, bathing, and taking medication.
One of the advantages of elderly caring at home is that they become at home among their families, sons & daughters, and grandchildren. This adds to their feelings of love and interaction. Showing respect and patience while dealing with the elderly could be realized through:
-understand their communication problems.
-understand their behavior.
-understand their fears.
– understand their anger.
-understand their mood changings.
-understand their state of health like Alzheimer’s, their visual impairment, their forgetting, and their lack of movement.
– During visits, make sure to leave the house as you came, and do not make major changes.
– Talk appropriately with them and make sure to share your details with them.
– Get them to participate in the family conversation and give them a chance to talk without interruption.
– Don’t make radical changes in the house while visiting, so they do not feel alienated. It is enough to equip the house in a way that helps them while living, which means you can only change some details.
-While making changes at home, ask them and consult them first and know what they prefer.
Caring for the elderly at home makes you face some challenges. Still, with some simple things and planning like relying on specialists (caregivers help, or a resident nurse), you will find the issue more useful and easy than you thought.
6-Providing them with proper nutrition:
With age, the nature of the human body changes, and that’s what happens with seniors. They lose their muscle mass, while older people need to eat fewer calories and maintain their ideal weight. And that’s the importance of having a medical professional.
The elderly person is advised to eat some things because the body needs fewer calories and more nutrients, such as:
– Fruits and vegetables, choose a range of species with vibrant colors.
– Whole grains, such as oatmeal, wheat bread, and brown rice.
– Milk, low-fat or fat-free cheese, rice with vitamin D, and calcium.
– Seafood, poultry, and eggs.
– Beans and nuts.
7- Make sure that medicines are available with doses:
Due to aging, and during senior parents’ home care, medicines — Alzheimer’s, diabetes, obesity, and others — abound.
Here comes another important role for nursing at home, which makes it easier for you to organize and take medicines properly, as the elderly could forget about them due to their abundance.
You can also buy a medicine-suppression pill with a specific label with medicine names.
8- Concentrating on elderly activities:
-The performance of non-exaggerated activity affects their activity, vitality, and psychological and physical health. The senior parents may face some problems in movement during home care. Still, the presence of a nurse at home or resident nurse helps senior people elderly to proceed with their movement properly without suffering negative health complications.
-As they grow older, the elderly’s bodies and health change, so having a nurse at home is always the best, as they are knowledgeable and have a medical background.
Home nursing services deal with some health changes in the body of the elderly:
– Body form
– Muscle loss
– Overweight.
– Brain function
– Mood
– Movement.
9- Things you should avoid during elderly homecare:
Please take care of certain things you may neglect unintentionally, but they are very important. When a person gets older due to weak capabilities and illness, old age, and feeling helpless at times, he feels annoyed or upset. Therefore, certain behaviors should be avoided while dealing with the elderly, such as:
-Don’t use a stern tone of voice when they fail to serve themselves or do some of their personal things.
-Don’t blame them if they forget something
-Don’t make fun of them concerning their technology ignorance, whether in public or private.
-Don’t make them feel that their words are repetitive, silly, or irrelevant.
-Don’t get mad when they ask you the same thing over and over again.
-Do not answer them lightly or improperly.
-Don’t interrupt them while they’re talking about a situation you know or have been through.
-Don’t talk about inheritance or handing over inheritance, and don’t mention their mental or physical inability to manage some of the things.
10-Things to advise elderly parents at homecare:
We always feel a great fear toward our parents or grandparents. If we do not communicate with the elderly on a daily basis or if we do not live with them, they may be facing some obstacles, and this is why we would prefer to advise them on things like:
-Knowing more about his rights.
-dealing with the nurse at home in a way that accepts medical help for their better health.
-Sign documents only after review, with trusted persons, or after consulting their family members.
This advice should be mentioned more than once to refresh it in their memories.
11- How to deal with an elderly Alzheimer’s patient during home care:
Human relationships are generally communicative, which can be difficult for people with the disease. Of course, an effective way of communicating must be found to achieve the primary objective, which is to provide the necessary health and psychological care during home care for the senior parents. In this particular case, we would recommend using nurses at home or a resident nurse who is fully aware of how to properly deal with an Alzheimer’s patient on a medical basis.
The perception of an Alzheimer’s patient may be in poor condition, which is reflected in how responsive he is to the service provider’s talk and advice.
This inevitably leads to the point of non-understanding, where a nurses at home provider is unable to communicate with and serve. At the same time, the patient feels isolated and unable to perform their daily activities normally.
All of these things can be avoided by following some simple things that facilitate communication between the senior parents and the home nursing provider:
– First, the provider, whether a family member or a home nursing provider, must be patient, using simple vocabulary with short sentences.
– Use a calm tone of voice.
– Speaking slowly and clearly does not mean that the patient should be treated as a child. One of the advantages of nurses at home is that they can deal extensively with the senior parents.
– Respect is the most important thing.
– To move away from dispersants of all kinds, such as television. This is to help them concentrate on the conversation they’re talking about, and home nurses can help because they care for the senior people at home based on medical background.
– We have all the time; we should not interrupt the talk of the Alzheimer’s patient and not rush to respond at all costs.
– Attempt to interpret the patient’s gestures and link them to what they may need. A home nursing provider can do this.
– Asking questions in the form of choices, open questions must be avoided.
12- Depend on home nursing services:
Sometimes you can think that taking care of the elderly at home is more proper for your parents without depending on any outer helps like nurses at home, which is very important for the elderly specially who faces Alzheimer, Aging, vision problems, eating disorder, etc….
Why nursing at home is so important? let’s mention:
– Following up with the elderly.
– Organizing medicines for them.
– Following up the health improvement of the elderly.
– Taking care of the physiological and biological side of the elderly.
Things to take care of while depending on nurses at home:
1- To be licensed
2- Make sure that the nurse is related to an actual company with a known headquarter.
3- The nursing company provides variety of nursing services.
13- Most common diseases the elderly face:
– Asthma: Chronic inflammation in the respiratory air stream. Asthma occurs when the bronchi are highly susceptible to allergies, especially when exposed to environmental externalities.
How we can protect older people from asthma:
1. Avoid allergens such as dust.
2. Keep them away from smoking.
3. Keep yourself healthy.
4. don’t let them use any allergy medication without going to the doctor
– Atrophic arthritis
– Diabetes
– Myocardial hypertrophy
– Vision & hearing problems.
– dental problems
– sleep disturbance
– dementia
– Urinary problems.
– gum problems
