Four Ways to Build a Partnership With a Home Health Care Nurse
When your mom or dad needs home health care services, you want to make sure you build a strong partnership with the nurse or nurses coming to help them. How do you do this? These four tips will help.
Ask Questions
Home Health Care Havertown, PA: Home Health Nurses
Ask questions. Don’t think that the question you have is too embarrassing to ask. It may seem that way, but home health care nurses would rather know you completely understand. If you’ll be taking over your mom’s medication management when the time with the skilled nurse ends, the nurse wants to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing.
If you’ve watched the nurse take your dad’s blood pressure and wonder why you always get a different reading when you use the digital one, ask why. See if it would be better to learn how to take his blood pressure the traditional way.
Be Honest
Be honest with the skilled nurse, therapist, or whoever else is providing home health care services. If you try to hide things in hopes of looking better or seeming that you know more than you do. It’s better to be honest and get the instruction you need. You want to make sure your parent is getting the right care.
For example, if your dad is on a low-sugar diet, but you know he’ll never give up that pint of IPA during the week, talk to the nurse. A plan can be arranged to help keep your dad’s drinking to a minimum. He may need to switch to a non-alcohol version or switch to a beverage like HOP that is seltzer mixed with hop oils and brewer’s yeast.
Make Yourself Available
Be available for instructions, to address concerns, or to answer questions. When you’re talking to the skilled care nurse, put away your phone and focus just on the nurse. Do not act like it’s an annoyance having to take this time or that you have better things to do.
If the nurse needs to meet with you once a week, make sure you’re there and on time. If the nurse asks for other family members to also be there, make it known to everyone. Set reminders through an app like Google Calendar to make sure everyone has the same reminder and time.
Listen
Listen carefully to instructions and double back to the “ask” rule if you have questions. If you worry about remembering steps, write them down for guidance.
When possible, have the nurse there to watch you do something for your mom or dad. If you do it wrong, it can be corrected right then. Note what you did wrong so that you don’t repeat the same mistake.
Elderly care is a great service to have in addition to home health care. Your mom or dad has a skilled nurse for some of the medical aspects of care. Elderly care aides help with other tasks like laundry, housekeeping, meal preparation, and transportation. Learn more by calling a specialist.
If you or an aging loved one are considering Home Health Care in Havertown, PA please contact the caring staff at True Direct Home Health Care today.
Doc, as he is called by everyone - staff, patients and clients - first experienced home health care and hospice care while as a colleg student at King's College as he cared for his mother every day while she first battled COPD and then lung cancer. It was during this time that he came to understand that caring for a patient was more than just clinical expertise.
"Admittedly, my strongest attribute is my communication skills and the simple fact that I love to help people. Even the smallest thing you can do for someone really can mean so much to them long term. In fact, it could change them forever. That's what providing quality personal home health care should be all about."
In his spare time, he cooks for homeless shelters and children's music and arts events. He also is highly involved in his local youth sports soccer academy as a coach and Board member.
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