Health Care at Home: Why do even the Family Members ‘Deserve’ it

How does it feel to have a doctor at home? Or for that matter, a nurse at home? Reassuring isn’t it? Knowing that your loved one who is recuperating from a long term injury or illness is well cared for at home when you are away for work, is peaceful to say the least.

What Home Health Care actually Entails

Availing health care at home is not entirely a new phenomenon but it wouldn’t really be wrong to claim that it has actually started gaining momentum in recent years. People have actually come to comprehend the world of benefits these services have to offer. The thought of meeting your ailing loved one whenever you want is comforting but people, in droves, had so far stayed away from home health care solely because they wrongly assumed that these services came with hefty quotes.

However, with the equally soaring hospital fees, home health care did emerge as a possible consideration. A more sagacious estimation of costs paved the way for a surge in demand for these services.

Peace of Mind for the Family Members as well

Besides offering personalized care to the patients themselves, the home health care providers make the lives of the family members easy as well. Think about carrying on with your regular obligations like home, office, grocery and other community responsibilities without having to fret about paying visits to hospitals within prefixed time periods.

Yes health care at home provides you the independence to reach out to the patient whenever you want to. The patient is taken care of by a dedicated caregiver (a nurse) who does not have other patients to attend to unlike in hospitals or nursing homes (hence personalized care). The caregiver, in turn, works under the supervision of a senior physician, who is not present at your place but is kept informed about the patient’s condition by the nurse at home.

What the caregiver does and should do

Fundamentally, the caregiver has the following responsibilities:

They administer medicines on time
Help with the dressing (if needed)
Administer injections on time
Report patient’s condition to the doctor and procure medicines and injections as per dosage instructions (which may change from time to time)

There are additional responsibilities as well. It needs to be noted that they are the ones who are in charge of procuring the medicines and injections, the ones that can be procured from the hospital or nursing home itself. Plus, they are the ones that spend most of the time with the patient and are witness to not only the physical but the emotional fluctuations taking place as well. Patients experiencing long term care have a long emotional battle to win as well. The feelings of being confined to the bed, not being able to move around to perform regular obligations and just being sick or injured, do have emotional ramifications that need to be handled with equal sensitivity.

Make sure that you are getting professionals on board who are not only trained to handle the physical needs of the patients but their emotional needs as well.