subject: Home Health Care For The Nervous Nelly [print this page] If you have parents that are from the baby boomer generation, youll know that they are beginning to have needs that are very different from those of middle age. They may need a bit more help getting around these days. They might be more susceptible to injury or taking a bit longer to recover from an injury than they would have if they were younger. If your baby boomer parents need just a little more help doing everyday things, consider getting them help from a home health care agency. Finding an agency can be as easy as doing a Google search.
What is Home Health Care?
Home health care is a term used to describe licensed professionals such as nurses, home health care aides and social workers who help senior citizens with the essential tasks of daily living such as cleaning, cooking and running errands such as retrieving mail and grocery shopping.
In your search for a home health care agency, you may have also come across the term home care. Sometimes, home health care and home care is used interchangeably to describe the same type of services. However, the main technical difference between the two terms is that home care can be provided by laypeople as opposed to licensed professionals.
What Do Home Health Care Aides Do?
Caregivers who work for home health care agencies usually assist their elderly clients in the tasks of living such as cooking meals, house cleaning and running errands outside of the home. If your parent has more serious needs, care can also be provided by hospice nurses and rehabilitative personnel. When researching home health care agencies, discuss your parents needs with each prospective company. Make sure that each prospective agency has the skilled personnel to attend to your parents specific situation.
Reasons to Consider Home Health Care For Your Loved One
When your parent is being taken care of by a home health care agency, you wont have to worry about how your mom or dad is being treated in an impersonal nursing care facility. Instead, they can have their needs met in familiar surroundings.
Hiring a home health care agency also takes a lot off the shoulders of you and other family members. If you hire the right home health care agency, you can rest assured that loving and patient staff members will have nothing but the best interests of your parent in mind at all times.
Now that youve been introduced to home health care, you can now go out and look for agencies that best match the particulars of your parents needs. Dont rush this search. Hiring the aides that will help your parents in the last stages of their life is one of the most important decisions youll ever make.
