Choosing Home Care Services That Meet Your Needs
Getting older comes with certain challenges, but leaving your home should not be one of them. When you want to continue living in your own home, you may need to look for home health care services that make this easier. By looking through the different services, you can choose the best ones for your specific situation and change them as time goes on.
Daily Home Care
Daily activities, such as cleaning and cooking are two basic services that many home care agencies offer. In most cases, these are non-medical aids, and they do not offer assistance with medication or wound care. However, they do have CPR and first aid training, so they can respond appropriately if an emergency should happen.
Typically, these aids help prepare meals and snacks. They also help with light cleaning tasks such as vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes and washing clothes.
Home care aids also offer companion services, which means they will watch TV, read to you or just have a basic conversation. Unfortunately, many people as they age go out less and do not interact with other individuals on a daily basis. By having an aid, you can get the social interactions you need from the comfort of your home.
Another service offered is travel assistance. This is especially important if you can no longer drive due to medical or other issues. The aid will drive you to the store, to medical appointments or to any other location you need to visit.
Medical Help
If you have medical concerns, you will need to hire an aid that has medical training. A basic medical aid helps with wound care after a surgery, administers medications, checks blood pressure and helps monitor your sugar levels. Many of these workers have a nursing certificate, which many states require for someone to be a medical home care aid.
If you need medical care along with physical therapy, it is essential that you look for aids that have this background. Not all medical aids have the experience or training to help with your physical therapy needs.
When looking for medical aids, you want to inform the agency you contact about all of the services you require. Some agencies have aids that handle the medical aspects of home care, along with travel assistance, food preparation and light cleaning.
It is important to note that not all medical aids offer help with daily care. For this reason, you want to take your time to consider your current and future needs. With these aspects in mind, you can choose the right aid to help you, so you can continue to live in your own home.
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