Bob Swadkins, the owner of Golden Heart Senior Care, participated in a podcast with Vegas Healthcare on March 11th, 2024. It was a pleasure working with Diego Trujillo.
Month: March 2024
How To Handle Your Senior’s Increasing Care Needs
Care needs evolve over time and as aging adults experience health changes. Home care assistance can be there when seniors first decide to age in place, helping them to establish routines and have companionship. As seniors need more help, however, elder care can also adjust to address those new situations. The key is to be as prepared as possible.
Establish Clear Communication
Open and honest communication helps everyone involved to share as much information as possible. This means also keeping seniors in the loop about care decisions and getting their interpretations of what needs to change and what doesn’t. This helps everyone stay on the same page and put the right care options into place.
Look at Current and Future Needs
While it’s not always possible to anticipate every single need, there are some situations that make it easy to see what might be coming down the road for aging adults. Working with healthcare providers to get an accurate prognosis helps a lot. It’s also a good idea to stay on top of what challenges seniors are facing, especially in terms of activities of daily living.
Gradually Increase Support
Most of these changes don’t happen overnight. Seniors might start out needing only a little bit of assistance from home care services. Companion care is often an easy first stage of support, and as seniors need more help the assistance can ramp up. It’s much better overall to gradually increase support as needs increase. This allows aging adults to get used to having help they can rely on.
Evaluate How it’s Going
Establishing regular timeframes to evaluate how home care assistance is going is another great idea. Time passes quickly, especially when everyone involved is busy. Knowing that there are set evaluation points can make it easier to keep track of whether things are changing more quickly than they did in the past.
Identify Milestones
If seniors are facing specific healthcare issues, there may be some significant milestones that indicate additional help is necessary from senior care services. Healthcare providers and other specialists can help family caregivers identify these milestones so they’re easier to spot. Changes in medications, behaviors, or overall health may necessitate that seniors have increased care options available quickly.
Add Resources as Necessary
Caregiving is a tough journey to be on and family caregivers need all the help they can get. In addition to home care assistance, social workers and other healthcare professionals can be part of the team. The more help, the better, especially when seniors are facing difficulties like coming home from the hospital or taking new medications.
Aging adults often don’t need a lot of help from home care assistance right away. In fact, working with home care services when seniors are still doing a lot of things for themselves can be really helpful when those needs change. It’s typically much easier to ramp up home care assistance to keep up with the changes, especially when aging adults have already developed routines around accepting help.
If you are considering home care assistance in Henderson, NV for an aging loved one, please contact the caring staff at Golden Heart Senior Care of Summerlin. 702-800-4616.
What Are Some Common Issues Home Care Can Help Seniors Manage?
Daily life brings some big challenges for seniors, especially when their health begins to deteriorate. Fall risks, cognitive issues, mobility challenges, and more all bring difficulties that can make it tough for seniors to be as independent as they want to be. Those challenges also impact quality of life, affecting mental and emotional well-being. Home care providers can do a lot to address some of these challenges for aging adults.
Increased Fall Risk
Falling is a leading cause of hospitalization and injury for aging adults. As seniors age, their fall risks tend to increase as a result of health issues, cognitive changes, vision changes, and general safety concerns in their homes. If seniors do experience a fall, their risk of falling again increases dramatically, further complicating life. Having elder care providers there with them can ensure that these issues are addressed before they cause seniors to experience a fall.
Cognitive Decline
Cognitive decline can occur for a variety of reasons, including dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. These changes in how their brains function can impair judgment, memory, and decision-making abilities. Home care services offer support to seniors who are experiencing changes in how their brains work, making it easier for them to stay safe at home.
Sensory Changes
Seniors may not realize how much they depend on their senses, especially vision and hearing, until those senses start to change. Those changes have a huge impact on how well seniors are able to communicate and may cause them to start isolating themselves. Elder care services offer not only practical support, but also understanding companionship, which boosts quality of life significantly.
Mobility Difficulty
Mobility is another common challenge for seniors. Whether they’re experiencing changes to mobility because of illness or because of other issues, no longer being as mobile as they once were affects daily life. It also makes it difficult for seniors to keep living their lives the way they want to. Home care providers can help seniors to use assistive devices properly and keep them safe while assisting them with daily mobility.
Personal Care Challenges
Difficulty with tasks like dressing, grooming, and bathing might seem to be superficial, but it directly relates to hygiene. Personal care at home is there to offer compassionate assistance with these delicate tasks. Their help ensures that seniors can maintain their dignity while also remaining safe and comfortable.
Transportation Challenges
Driving limitations and lack of access to easy transportation can seriously limit quality of life for aging adults. They may find it impossible to get to vital appointments like meeting with their doctors and socializing becomes much more difficult. Elder care providers can do the driving, ensuring that seniors are safe and able to go wherever they want whenever they need to.
Home care services can be an essential part of ensuring that aging adults are able to face the challenges of growing older with dignity and independence. Some of these issues may continue to worsen over time, and home care is able to adjust and keep up with seniors and their changing needs.
Reference
https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/aging-place/aging-place-growing-older-home
If you are considering home care in Summerlin, NV for an aging loved one, please contact the caring staff at Golden Heart Senior Care of Summerlin. 702-800-4616.