What are the contents of daily care for the elderly

To put it bluntly, there are no fixed standardized items for daily care for the elderly. The essence is comprehensive care that focuses on the four core directions of basic life care, chronic disease management, psychological support, and safety protection, and is flexibly adjusted according to each elderly person's physical condition and living habits. The core goal is to make the elderly live comfortably, suffer less, and be energetic.

Many people’s understanding of nursing at the beginning is just “serving food and drink, reminding people to take medicine”, but when they actually practice it, they will find that it is much more than that. I used to help at a community nursing home and met 72-year-old Aunt Zhang, who has type 2 diabetes and degenerative knee disease. At first, her son thought that care was to test her blood sugar on time and give her blood sugar-lowering medicine. The meals were cooked according to the blood sugar table and had no taste at all. As a result, the aunt was bored at home every day and had a tantrum. Sometimes she deliberately refused to take medicine, and her blood sugar went up and down. Later, the nursing staff from the post station came to evaluate her twice. First, she wrapped the protruding coffee table corners and the edges of the steps on the balcony with soft strips. When shopping for groceries, she specially selected her favorite pumpkins and multi-grain rice. She also cooked low-sugar meals in different ways and accompanied her on the walking trails in the community every day after dinner. She walked slowly for 20 minutes, rubbed her knees for 10 minutes along the way, and helped her invite her old colleagues to come to her house to play mahjong for half a day every week. In just over two months, her blood sugar has stabilized, and the frequency of knee pain has dropped by more than half. The words "living is useless" that she used to talk about before are no longer said.

Of course, basic physiological care is the bottom line, and this cannot be vague at all. For example, an elderly person who has been lying down for a long time must turn over regularly and pat his back, no more than once every two hours, otherwise he will easily develop pressure sores, which will be difficult to heal once ulcers occur. Elderly people with bad teeth must make soft and tender meals, but they cannot eat porridge every meal, otherwise they will easily become malnourished and aggravate constipation. These are hard requirements with clinical basis.

Speaking of which, there is a lot of controversy in this field. Many clinical nurses feel that elderly care must adhere to medical standards. What time should you take medicine, how much salt should you eat every day, and how many steps should you take? In order to avoid accidents to the greatest extent, most colleagues who work in home care believe that it is still You have to follow the old man's wishes first. After all, it is better to live happily than to live for a few more months but suffer from discomfort every day. Just like a ninety-year-old man who has smoked for sixty or seventy years, forcing him to quit smoking will easily lead to psychological problems. It is better to let him smoke one or two cigarettes every day, and his mood will be comfortable and his body will be stable. There is actually nothing wrong with both of these statements. The core point is that a balance must be found based on the specific situation of the elderly and cannot be generalized.

A while ago, we picked up an 83-year-old man who had high blood pressure. His children had strictly prohibited him from eating his favorite pickled radish. As a result, the old man secretly hid half a can of pickled radish in his bedroom every day. He ate so much every time that his blood pressure often soared to 170/10. 0. Later, we discussed with his family and cut 2 thin slices of pickled radish for him to make porridge for breakfast every day. With just such a small adjustment, the old man no longer ate it secretly. His blood pressure has been stable at around 130/80 for more than half a year. Even his children did not expect the effect to be so good.

To put it bluntly, after you have been in this business for a long time, you will find that nursing is not a scripted list. It is just a suitable method that is honed little by little based on the temperament and habits of each elderly person.