What Is the Importance of Communication and Patient Feedback in Home Care?
Your mother is fading. You notice she is losing weight. Her memory is deteriorating. She seems withdrawn, depressed.
But how much of this is the expected decline of aging and how much is something more? And how do you know when it's time to sound the alarm to your mother's healthcare team?
It's not always easy to differentiate between the normal process of aging and the signs and symptoms of a more significant problem.
This is where the benefits of home care truly shine through. A home health aide can be an invaluable link between your loved one and the medical team caring for her.
At the heart of in-home caregiving, however, is strong communication. Without it, the strongest link between your loved one and her support team is broken.
This can mean that crucial health warning signs are disregarded, while important opportunities are missed.
Read on to learn more about harnessing the incredible benefits of home healthcare!
Making the Most of Home Care
Research is increasingly demonstrating the benefits of in-home care for the sick and elderly. Patients receiving in-home care not only enjoy better health and longer lives.
All this leads to marked improvements in patients' overall quality of life.
The cornerstone of such care, of course, is the care provider him or herself.
In your home care provider, you have at the ready a knowledgeable and compassionate expert to hear your concerns, answer your questions, and collaborate with your loved one's healthcare providers to ensure optimal care, always.
Best of all, routine visits from in-home care providers enhance the quantity and quality of social interaction your loved one engages in. Social engagement such as this has been proven not only to boost mood but also to support cognitive functioning, memory, and overall health.
Detecting Problems Early
As an added benefit, engaging with a trained healthcare provider in the home setting makes it easier to detect emerging problems early, before they can escalate into life-threatening illnesses.
That's because routine in-home care enables aides to observe the patient in a comfortable environment.
They get to see how the patient moves around his or her home. They get to monitor how the patient performs daily activities and interacts with friends and loved ones.
This makes changes far easier to detect than is possible in a doctor's office or hospital setting. In the clinic, the so-called "white coat syndrome" can lead to false positives, such as stress-induced increases in heart rate or blood pressure. Or worse, patients may try to cover up their symptoms in front of the doctor for fear of tests or hospitalizations.
Home life, however, is real life. It is the ideal place for a trained healthcare provider to see how the patient is really doing.
The Takeaway
Aging isn't for sissies. It's a difficult process for both the patient and her loved ones.
But it doesn't have to be so scary.
Quality in-home care that is built upon a foundation of strong communication, mutual trust, and respect can dramatically improve the health and well-being of patients.
Compassionate and attentive care providers can boost the quality of life for both patients and their families. They can significantly strengthen the connections between the patient and her medical team, making for the unsurpassed quality of care.
Visit our website to learn more about how in-home care can benefit your family and loved one.
