You’re well aware of the services that caregivers provide. If you call a home care agency, you can have caregivers come to your parents’ home each day, a few days a week, once a week, or a few times a month.
Home Health Care Syracuse NY – What Can a Home Health Care Nurse Do That Caregivers Cannot?
Once they’re with your mom and dad, caregivers can drive them to stores, clean their home, do the laundry, cook meals, and help them with personal care and grooming. They can remind your parents of upcoming appointments, medications that need to be taken, or when it’s time to eat or have a glass of water.
What about home health care? Your parent’s doctor mentioned it after your mom’s hospitalization. What does a home health care nurse offer that home care aides don’t?
Therapy
Home health care professionals can come to your parent’s home and offer speech, physical, and occupational therapies. These three therapeutic services are often necessary following a stroke. In the comfort of their home, your parents may feel more at ease working with a therapist.
Medication Injections and IVs
Your mom was in the hospital for a broken hip. She’s had the surgery, but her doctors are concerned that her bones are thin. She could take oral medications, but her doctor prefers IV or injections to lessen the chance of heartburn and indigestion.
Because it’s hard for your mom to get to a medical office regularly, the doctor recommends having a home health care nurse go to her home to inject bisphosphate injections or IV medications. Skilled nurses are trained and licensed to be able to administer injections and insert and remove IV tubes. Caregivers cannot do that.
Wound Care
Your dad is diabetic and had a sore on the bottom of his foot that became infected. He needs someone who can change bandages, wash out the sore, apply topical medications, and bandage it in fresh bandages. Wound care is a service offered by home health care professionals.
Your parent may also need wound care services after surgery. While you might be trusted to do this and given instructions by your mom or dad’s doctor, it may not be a task you feel comfortable completing. Be honest with the doctor about your comfort taking care of something like that.
It’s best to pair home care services with the skilled nursing services your mom or dad needs. To make arrangements, ask your mom or dad’s doctor for recommendations on the type of services needed. Talk about the daily activities that are hard for your parent to do independently before addressing health issues that require home health care services, too.
