Proper nutrition and medication management are essential for patients who have adapted to the private home care system. Home healthcare is necessary for people who cannot completely take care of themselves. Skilled and non-skilled professionals are necessary for a person’s health care, to provide support to family members who can act as secondary caregivers to these patients. Home care is elaborated in sites like https://www.theseniorlist.com/home-care/.

Why is home caring important?

This is a very good option for families who are living away from each other and who cannot take care of their next of kin due to the distance.

The training these providers went through makes them the best fit for taking care of patients within the privacy and comfort of their homes.

If there is a primary caregiver in the family, he or she might need to take time off to attend to more pressing matters. When that happens, he or she can have the peace of mind that the patient is cared of appropriately while he or she is gone.  

If the patient needs round-the-clock care and attention, family members may not be able to satisfy this need because of work or other equally important matters that they also need to address. 

Home care can be complicated

Inherently, it is a complex setup. The demands on the skills and technical knowledge on how to handle the patients, the financial aspects of the families, the ability and energy of all people involved, family relationships plus the home environment which is not really designed for health care, all these are parts of the equation that needs to be considered. It is entirely different from when your patients are in healthcare institutions that are predominantly designed and intended for health care. In private homes, the major caregivers are the family members who are majorly not skilled to do or carry on the responsibilities of taking care of their patients. Family members may take care of their patients out of love and responsibility but they do not have the skills to do so. Hence, it would end up in mismanagement of medicine or diet requirements.

Good nutrition

It is important for patients or the elderly who is subject to home care to proper and good nutrition as this is an important factor in maintaining and sustaining long-lasting health. Most often in the comfort of their homes patients and the elderly will fail to have good nutrition because either they would not have access to it or food available in the house are food that does not support their needs. Sometimes a balanced healthy diet is often overlooked by regular family members, and when the patients have the same food as they will have on their own, chances are the patients will be left under or malnourished. This can help contribute to the wellness or deterioration of the patient. Immune systems can grow weak when there is no proper nutrition, the development of other health issues or infections will also happen.

Many elderlies when left to live on their own, will not have access to proper diet due to reasons such as inability to secure transportation to get groceries for themselves, uncertainties as to which food is good for them or not, if there is a special diet to adhere to, they might find it difficult to find ingredients. Homecare agencies can help remedy this feat. They can do the shopping duties for the patients or the elderly.

When for example groceries have been done, preparing food is the next challenge to face. For those people who are used to live independently and prepare their own meals every day, when they are sick or when they become old, sometimes they do not get to have good nutrition because either they cannot prepare food on their own or they forget to prepare food for them. Healthcare providers in homecare help prepare food and make sure their patients are well hydrated. Hydration is also very important as most elderlies may forget to drink lots of fluids or refrain from it, especially when they have incontinence issues. 

Medication management

Part of every home care is medication management. Medication education is given to both patient and caregiver:  what the purpose of the medications is when to administer them, how much should be taken or given. Medicines must be prescribed by the physicians and included in the homecare plans. These should be in collaboration with the diet mean to give the patient good nutrition.

Medication management includes IV therapy, IM injections, G Oral, pain, subcutaneous medications, and physician-ordered laboratory works that need to be done.

Usually, only nurses are allowed to give medicines to patients, but a trained health care assistant is also authorized to administer medications to patients. Both nurses and health assistants, who are employed as health homecare personnel, should abide by the rules and policies in administering medications. All aspects of giving or administering the medicines at home should be covered by this policy in writing. Websites like this page discuss what the policies and guidelines should be explicit about. It should be clear in its guidelines pertaining to obtaining medicines, storing the medicines and disposing of them must also be included, recording the medicines, what to do if there was failure or error in administering medications, it also needs to include employment of specialists in procedures such as percutaneous endoscopic gastronomy supplement, and it should also include self-medication policies. 

You might be wondering why self-medication is included in the medication management policies. This is intended to promote self-medication when the patient has a long-term condition so he can somehow experience a certain amount of independence. However, this should also include the diligence of home care staff to assess and evaluate the service user’s ability to understand that medicines are intended only for proper use. They also need to ensure that medicines are locked away from patients.

Medications should also be properly recorded by the caregiver in order to ensure that a medication history is immediately available whenever necessary. This task is made clear by their agencies because this is a must-do for all health caregivers, may it be in the privacy of their homes, in a homecare institution or in medical institutions such as hospitals and hospices.

Since private home care means caring for a patient or elderly in a private home, instead of medical institutions, it is important that everything is recorded. Nurses and health care assistants are trained to use a medicine administration chart for this purpose. The chart must be signed and dated as to when medicines are administered. Family members must also make a list of all home care staff they have employed and who was authorized to give medicines. It should be properly initialled and dated as well.