Being hospitalized with pneumonia can be a frightening thing for anyone. When it’s an older individual, the risk to their health and even their life because pneumonia is serious. And significant.
If your father has been in the hospital due to pneumonia and is set to be discharged (or was recently discharged), then it’s important that he have the right type of support ready and available when he returns home.
What kind of support is the ‘right’ type of support?
A home health care provider. This is sometimes referred to as a visiting nurse. A home health care aide is somebody who can help aging seniors during their recovery from any number of health emergencies that may have landed them in the hospital. They can also be great asset even if a person never set foot in the hospital.
There is a difference between a home health care provider, or visiting nurse, and a home care aide. A home care aide is somebody who can assist with basic needs, like toileting and bathing, preparing meals, and so forth.
A home health care provider will focus more on direct medical attention. A home health care aide might check your father’s vital stats, like his temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and so forth.
If he is diabetic or even prediabetic, that home health care aide may check his blood sugar levels as well. This visiting nurse might then relay the information they obtain to your father’s primary care physician for proper remote monitoring.
When your father is dealing with pneumonia, recovering now at home, a home health care aide can be the key difference between a successful and healthy recovery and moments when he may have to return to the hospital or to his doctor for follow-up care.
What else can a home health care provider do to help?
An experienced home health care aide can advise your father to rest, just as his doctor told him to do before he was discharged from the hospital.
Sadly, too many people feel completely healthy or close to it when they’re discharged from the hospital following pneumonia. They assume they are “out of the woods.”
The reality is they aren’t.
The virus or bacteria is still in their system and the antibiotics are still doing their work to eliminate it from their body. A home health care aide can remind them to continue to rest, take it easy, and even administer medications they need at the right times.
It can make a world of difference between a potential readmission and complications and a healthy, solid recovery.
If you or an aging loved-one is considering home health care in Golden Beach, FL please contact the caring staff at Specialized Nursing Services today. (305) 652-2799