Having an elderly family member can require lots of attention and effort to give them the care they need. Even if you do not have work and life commitments that take you away from your elderly family member for hours on end, sometimes, they need professional care that you simply cannot provide. This is usually when you need to decide between home nursing and committing your loved one into a nursing home. While both are viable options, the benefits of home nursing are substantially more.
Before going into all the benefits that home nursing has for the elderly, you should first be aware of what kind of certification one needs to have before they can become a home nurse or a home health aide (HHA). To become a certified HHA a person needs to complete an HHA training program certified by the state where they want to work. You can find out more about the requirements and the skills an HHA has to offer and how to get certified to become a nurse for free on online nursing platforms.
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Here are some of the benefits of having a home health aide around.
1. Comfortability
More often than not, the elderly find issues with acclimating to new surroundings, especially if they suffer from mental illnesses such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. They feel much better if they are around familiar surroundings that they are comfortable with. Home nursing gives them that constant feeling of home, which can help maintain their health.
2. Assistance with Living Needs
A home nurse aids a person with most, if not all, their living needs. This includes feeding them, as well as helping them dress and undress, take showers, and use the washroom to name a few. While you might be willing to do all of this for your loved one, it can be both physically and mentally taxing, which is why having a professional can make all the difference.
3. Medication
Sometimes, without meaning to, a person can forget to take certain medication; or if the person takes many different types of medication, it can be hard to keep track of the dosages and the timing. Having a nurse at home enables the elderly to stick to their medication schedule as well as have someone keep track of whether a prescription needs to be filled.
4. Lower Risk of Physical Injury
Because the elderly usually overestimate their physical prowess, they end up sustaining physical injuries trying to pick up heavy stuff or climbing ladders. Having a person around to keep an eye on them and to help them with such physical activities will limit the risk of sustaining any kind of physical injury due to relatively strenuous activity.
5. Monitoring Health Condition
A nurse has the education necessary to monitor how an elderly’s health is progressing. Sometimes, people do not know what symptoms or signals to look for, to find out if they are getting better or not. Having a professional around to keep track of the condition of an elderly individual will make responding to emergencies much quicker and may help prevent health emergencies from occurring in the first place.
6. Peace of Mind
Peace of mind is not only for the elderly. More often than not, family and close friends drive themselves sick with worry over their loved ones. They worry about how they are doing, whether they are going to be okay alone, and whether an accident might befall them. Home nursing enables the family and close friends of an elderly person to rest assured that their loved one is okay both physically and mentally.However, if this is a case that you are not having at this point, make sure you have a nursing home abuse lawyer Kansas City to contact. It always best to be ready for anything.
7. Cost Effectiveness
Believe it or not, home nursing is more cost-effective than other options out there. If you think about it, having your elderly loved-one stay at home alone can lead to accidents resulting in physical injuries that will require you to pay medical bills. There is also the fact that if they cannot take care of their basic needs, they will perish due to malnutrition. If you compare having a home health aide with having your elderly remain in a nursing home, you will find that home nursing is much less expensive since there is no need to pay for accommodations.
8. Companionship
As mentioned above, sometimes, you cannot spend many hours with your elderly loved one due to work commitment or life in general. Instead of having him or her be lonely, without anyone to talk to, you get an HHA to keep them company.
These are just eight of the many benefits that home nursing can have for the elderly. No matter what choice you make concerning caring for your loved one, make sure to consider their needs and make sure that they are as comfortable as possible with the decision you are making on their behalf.
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