Tag: elderly care

Competency in palliative nursing

Post author By Nightingale
Post date July 13, 2022

Palliative Care

Palliative care is specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness. This type of care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of the illness. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family.

Palliative care is provided by a specially-trained team of doctors, nurses and other specialists who work together with a patient’s other doctors to provide an extra layer of support. Palliative care is based on the needs of the patient, not on the Patient’s prognosis. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness, and it can be provided along with curative treatment.

Improves quality of life:

Palliative care teams focus on quality of life. They treat people suffering from the symptoms and stress of serious illnesses such as:

Cancer
Congestive heart failure ( CHF)
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
Kidney disease
Alzheimer’s
Parkinson’s
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and many more.

Relieves Suffering from Symptoms and Stress:

The goal of Palliative care is to relieve suffering and provide the best possible quality of life for patients and their families. Symptoms may include:

Pain
Depression
Shortness of breath
Fatigue
Constipation
Nausea
Loss of appetite
Difficulty of sleeping
And anxiety

Also Palliative care team will work with the patients to identify and carry out patient’s goals: symptom relief, counselling, spiritual comfort, or whatever enhances patient’s quality of life. Palliative care can also help patient to understand all of their treatment options.

As an experience Palliative care provider, we should obtain below given quality of services for patients:

Competency in palliative nursing

Communication skills. A highly developed range of sensitive and facilitative communication skills is to be expected in nursing, but is not unique to a palliative setting. …
Psycho-social skills
Teamwork skills
Physical care skills
Life closure skills
Interpersonal skills

What is the difference between Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care?

PALLIATIVE CARE	END-OF-LIFE CARE
Living with a life-limiting illness with any prognosis	Ongoing medical treatments as appropriate
Symptom management	Hospice care / Home supports for Elderly
Maximizing quality of life	Weeks to months to live
Spiritual healthcare	Symptom management
Psychosocial support	Spiritual healthcare
Maximizing community supports	Psychosocial support

Principles of palliative care

Affirms life and regards dying as a normal process.
Neither hastens nor postpones death.
Provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms.
Integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of care.
Offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death.

Tags elderly care, palliative care

Age with Dignity. Senior Home Health Care Services can Make the Old Age of Your Elderly Golden.

Post author By Nightingale
Post date September 11, 2019
No Comments on Age with Dignity. Senior Home Health Care Services can Make the Old Age of Your Elderly Golden.

In a fast-paced metro like Dubai, it is a fact that despite how much we want to spend time with our elderly at home but hardly manage to spend quality time with family due to the professional rat race in our lives. As a result, our elderly loved ones feel extremely lonely at home and may slip into a depression. Also at their senile age, they often behave like children and may say that all is well but in reality they may be ignoring their health condition, skipping medicines or are simply not adept to take care of their daily chores or maintain the required standards of hygiene. In such a scenario or your loved elderly has undergone any operation or old age-related health condition do consider taking the services of a senior home healthcare agency or appoint a professional old age care nurse as our city of Dubai is seeing a proliferation of old age care services.

What is included in Senior home health care services?

ADLs or Assistance with daily living. As suggested from the name appoint a senior care nurse to take care of the daily chores of an elderly living in your house. Appoint the nurse during the day shift if you are not at home during day hours due to office. An elderly care nurse would assist with bathing, cleaning, feeding of your elderly as per a strict diet chart and even can assist with food being prepared at your home for the elderly. The elderly home care nurse will ensure that your loved one gets care that of a nursing home at your house by maintaining the hygiene of the strictest quality. She will also ensure that your elderly is safe in your house by mitigating risks like falling due to wet floors, particularly in the washroom.

The second most important aspect of ADLs is monitoring medicine prescribed for the elderly. If your elder has conditions like hypertension or diabetic then the nurse would advocate timely medicines, closely monitor the condition of the elderly and in case of any irregularities would report to y0u or even the home healthcare agency that has appointed her. She can even maintain a record of the readings to better understand the improvement of the patient over some time. A senior home health care nurse will advocate a routine of exercises recommended to a diabetic person or can even take the diabetic person out for a stroll or a walk. She should be knowledgeable about the exercises recommended in such health condition and routinely ensure that your elderly get their share of workout. For other conditions like post-operative care, post-surgery care, senile health condition, terminally ill patients go for a nurse who is trained to handle such cases and consult about the same with your elderly home healthcare agency. Some scenarios may require you to appoint a nurse who is sound with postoperative wound dressing so that no infection develops and your elderly receives proper care at home. For more serious elderly patients at home, you can even appoint a nurse for the night shift. So that you get your night’s sleep without having to worry about your loved one and at the same time your loved one’s condition is constantly monitored.

Mental health and companionship

Statistics in a fast city like Dubai, unfortunately, point out that a major chunk of the city’s elderly population is suffering from mental health issues, depression and loneliness. It is quite unfortunate that the generation who enabled us to lead a life where we can today satisfy most of our material wants have relegated our parents and seniors to this position of pity and loneliness. Appointing a senior home healthcare nurse at your residence not only takes care of your loved ones physically but provides companionship through the day when you are out and busy with professional commitments. This companionship of a home nurse can bring joy to them, restore dignity in their lives and fills them with appreciation and positivity for you. A home health care nurse specialised for seniors are trained to an extent about the mental health of the elderly, how to make them feel loved and cared for. Most importantly these home healthcare nurses in Dubai lends a patient ear to whatever your elderly have to say and engage with them through storytelling.

There are multiple benefits of appointing an elderly home healthcare professional at your residence from a standard and professional elderly home healthcare service provider. In the long run, they may also help you save health expenses incurred on elders if their health condition goes unchecked or he/she contracts a lifestyle disease. All you need to do is keep your mind open to these newer concepts coming in to make our elderly population’s lives a little better and explore more on this by actually visiting a elderly home care centre for your elderly loved one to age at his home with dignity rather than having a harrowing experience in an old age home or suffer in a hospital just for the sake of better care.

Tags elderly care, home care, old age

Elderly Care

Know what is covered under elderly care services by a professional home nurse.

Post author By Nightingale
Post date June 10, 2019
No Comments on Know what is covered under elderly care services by a professional home nurse.

Home care for the elderly is a much sought after service in a bustling city like Dubai. With a population comprising of expats and people from different parts of the world coming to Dubai for attaining their professional goals often are left with little time to spare at home and care for their families particularly elderly people like their parents by staying at home. Hence, most working people in Dubai are going for professional elderly home care services. Here’s what you need to know about these services and the roles and responsibilities elderly care agencies are ready to take up providing the best of care to your elderly parent.

Elderly care service agencies appoint nurses who are trained in old age care with the expertise to administer medicines, injections, therapies required by the elderly patient. These nurses are generally trained to handle health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, gastroenteritis related conditions, several kinds of postoperative care including joint replacement surgeries, cataract and other conditions that are common occurrences during old age.

Senior home assistance or senior home healthcare services broadly involves three categories of nurses or caregivers that you may require as per the health condition and necessity of your patient.

PRIMARY CAREGIVERS

Primary caregivers are home healthcare nurses for seniors who are administered to provide medical treatment to elderly who need care for health conditions discussed above. Their responsibilities include administering medicine to the patient as per a schedule, injecting medicine as required, undertake medical investigations at homes such as blood sugar or blood pressure tests as advised by the doctor and record the same in a chart to be reported to the doctor. Their responsibility entails them to monitor the health condition of the patient during their working hours and inform the guardian of the patient or even the doctors. Primary caregivers also provide the service of dressing of wounds.

PRIMARY CAREGIVERS WITH DAILY ACTIVITY ASSISTANCE

This type of caregivers or elderly care nurses assists patients with daily activities apart from medical care. The activities include helping the patient with daily chores such as feeding, bathing, brushing, maintaining the highest level of toilet hygiene, helping the patient with mobility such as getting out of the bed to assist the patient while going to the toilet.

PRIMARY CAREGIVERS WITH ALL ROUND ASSISTANCE

This type of home care nurses specializing in elderly care provide services instrumental to daily living and functioning of the patient and his surrounding environment. Such services include cooking food for the patient as per the strict dietary requirements as suggested by the physician. She will follow a procedure of cooking that maintains the highest standard of hygiene and retains maximum nutritional value. The food also balances the different nutritional requirements of the patient. The all-around elderly caregiver ensures that the environment in which the patient is living maintains cleanliness to prevent germs. The nurse ensures cleaning of the room in which the patient resides and set some rules for visitors as well as family members entering the area.

CAREGIVERS WITH EMOTIONAL ASSISTANCE

Mental health and a positive spirit to fight diseases are a huge area of concern and requires specialized care. Terminally ill patients, patients with disability or fighting malignant diseases such as cancer often suffer from stress and actively seek the company of caregivers who provide them with the courage to fight such health conditions. Home health care agencies providing services for elderly care appoint a special category of nurses with training to deal with cognitive and mental health issues. If your patient has any such mental health issues and you are not being able to spare enough time with your loved one to help him/her overcome such a delicate phase in life, you should go for caregivers who can provide emotional assistance to your loved one along with medical care.

WHAT’S NEXT WHEN YOU HAVE ALREADY CHOSEN A CATEGORY OF CAREGIVER?

Now that you have chosen a home nurse for the care of your elderly patient at home, it’s time to have a one-to-one conversation with the caregiver and list down the responsibilities specifically required by your patient. At this stage, it is important for you to reveal every medical detail related to the health of your patient and create a schedule of activities in consultation with your elderly home care expert. Since the engagement between the elderly care nurse and the patient is not going to be one that is restricted to functional activities so it is advisable to facilitate a beforehand conversation between the caregiver and the elder patient to find out how they go along emotionally as care is more about emotional bonding that leads to wellness.

Based on the above categories choose an elderly home care nurse suitable to your requirements from a reputed agency with necessary accreditations to provide you with a caregiver who can make your loved one’s journey in the senile age a truly caring one.

Tags elderly care, home nurse

Elderly Care

Elders at your home needs more attention & care than you think

Post author By Nightingale
Post date August 9, 2018
No Comments on Elders at your home needs more attention & care than you think

Seniors living at your homes once again starts behaving like kids after they reach their golden years. Particularly, in terms of paying attention to their health & medical condition and taking care of themselves. In a fast-paced city like Dubai, surrounded with our busy schedules all the time and lack of proper knowledge about elderly care, we often end up neglecting the health of the loving seniors at our homes and can’t provide them with the quality of life that they deserve coming to their golden years. In fact, not picking up the symptoms in time, related to ill-health of the elderly population at your household can be a serious threat for them, as it may require them to be hospitalized and also could be a reason for a big strain on your financial resources because of long-term hospitalization expenses. Be it taking the right care of the elders at your home, keep you updated about their health & medical condition by picking the symptoms of their health in time for you take measures or dealing with situations and illnesses such as post-operative care & recovery, Alzheimer’s and Dementia etc, or general care there could be no better solution than elderly home care from the comfort of your home by professional nurses adept in elderly care.

What Does Specialized Elderly Care Involves?

Elderly care services aim to maintain and improve the quality of life of the elderly population with practical support for everyday activities and helping them with personal care such as dressing, eating meals, medications etc. However, it’s not restricted to general home health care of the elderly alone. It’s about timely understanding & monitoring of their health condition from their health symptoms and keep you informed about it. Dedicated & trained elderly care experts assist seniors suffering from various specific age-related health conditions & health issues. Overall, elderly care aims to relieve you of your worries regarding the health of the elderly at the home that gives you a feeling that they are in safe hands.

Elderly Care is not limited to Personal Care only but includes:

Monitor vital signs: Check temperature, readings in case of Diabetes and Hypertension, pulse etc.
Wound care, skin care and infection control in a home environment
Daily activities – Bathing, Feeding, Dressing
Maintaining a medical records log
Maintaining nutrition and diet
Assisting with toileting issues
Walking and exercise assistance
Engaging in mental physical activities

Elderly Care for patients with specific health conditions

Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care

Alzheimer’s could be an unnerving experience for your elder. All it needs you is to stay calm. An elderly care expert can help you in the following manner:

Helps not just patient but family members to remain calm and ensure patient remains safe at home.
Tries to socially engage the patient in facilitating constant social interaction
Plans and executes activities that constantly stimulates the mind of the patient
Helps minimize the patient’s changing behaviour

Respite Care

Caring for your loved elder is undoubtedly a matter of joy but at the same time, it can be an emotionally draining and exhaustive. Respite care aims at giving the family caregiver a break to reduce the physical, emotional, financial consequences that can be overwhelming for the caregiver and the family.

This will typically include;

Provide appropriate care, ensure the safety of the patient in case of absence of the caregiver or any family member.
Relieving family members from the constant responsibility of providing care to the patient
Attending to all self-help needs of the patient in absence of the caregiver

Postoperative care and Recovery

Longer stays in hospitals could have an impact on the emotional self of the elderly, make him lose his ability to do an everyday task, lose mobility and could incur a huge financial burden on the family. Elderly care from the comfort of home can be an effective solution during the recovery period.

Advantages of Postoperative care

Provide a solution for the patient to rest at home while getting treatment just as in the hospital.
Elderly care experts will do a thorough assessment of the condition of the patient & accordingly, plan their care.
It takes care right from initial assessment, planning the care and recovery.
All services are tailored to the individual needs of the patient by expert nurses.

Elders are most precious. The love they share for us is blissful and takes every new generation ahead to achieve their life’s goals. It’s time to love them back in their golden years by spending more quality time with them and to do so nothing can beat Nightingale Dubai’s elderly care services for the complete care of your elder at home at every stage, all condition in the best year’s of their lives.

Tags elderly care, home care

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