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08 Nov 2017

National Hospice Palliative Care Week: 3 Senior Care Options

   

Topics: Home Care Providers

Did you know the second week of May is National Hospice Palliative Care Week? The goal of hospice palliative care is to relieve people’s suffering, and improve their quality of life. It can help people who are living with life-threatening illnesses or who are dying of terminal illnesses.

Hospice palliative care is managed by healthcare providers, like doctors and nurses. This type of care can be provided to patients in their own homes, which helps keep them comfortable. If your loved one is receiving hospice palliative care at home, they may need other assistance, too. Here are three senior care options that can be helpful for people receiving hospice palliative care.

1. Help with Housekeeping

When a person is receiving palliative care, they may not be able to handle their own housekeeping tasks. The doctors and nurses who are managing your loved one’s pain and other symptoms can’t help with these types of tasks. If your loved one isn’t able to do housekeeping, those tasks may fall on your shoulders.

Instead of spending quality time with your loved one, you may need to spend time vacuuming, dusting, or cleaning the kitchen. When a loved one has a life-threatening illness, every moment is precious. It can be frustrating to spend your visits cleaning the house.

Help with housekeeping is one of the senior care options that can make your life easier during this difficult time. A caregiver can come to your loved one’s home to take care of basic housekeeping tasks. Then, you have more time to visit with your loved one and enjoy your time together.

2. Help with Personal Care

Your loved one’s illness may make it hard or impossible for them to handle basic self-care tasks. These tasks include things like bathing, using the toilet, grooming, getting dressed, and remembering to take medications. They may need care throughout the day to handle these tasks.

It’s hard to help your loved one with these types of needs. You can’t miss work to help with personal care tasks, and your loved one may not be able to wait until you’re done work. This can put a lot of pressure on your family during an already stressful time.

One of the helpful senior care options you can take advantage of is help with these activities. A trained caregiver can come to your loved one’s home every day to help them with personal care tasks. When you’re at work, you can trust that the caregiver is taking good care of your loved one.

3. Companionship Care

Receiving hospice palliative care can be a lonely experience, even when it’s carried out at home. The doctors and nurses are there to monitor medical conditions, use medical equipment, and relieve pain. They’re not there to socialize, so your loved one may feel lonely.

While you and the rest of your family visit your loved one as often as you can, they may still feel lonely. When you’re at work, and your kids are at school, your loved one doesn’t have anyone to chat or laugh with.

Companionship care is one of the senior care options that you may not be aware of. Companionship care means that a senior caregiver goes to your loved one’s house to offer companionship and socializing. In addition to conversation, caregivers can help your loved one with hobbies, like scrapbooking. They can also play games, like board games or cards, to make your loved one’s days more fun. Senior care agencies make an effort to send the same caregivers every time, so your loved one can form a bond with their caregivers.

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Tennille Kerrigan

Tenille is the president of Senior Helpers Canada, the premier franchise that delivers on what families and their loved ones need most. She has bachelor’s degree in business administration from York University, and has over 10 years of experience as a business owner and director. With Senior Helpers, our franchisees provide the professionalism and expert care that families and their aging loved ones require.

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