Precautions for daily care of the elderly include

The core precautions for daily care of the elderly can be summarized into three general directions: "physiological care emphasizes individualization, psychological care emphasizes empathy, and risk prevention and control takes the lead." There is no unified standard that is universally applicable. All measures must be flexibly adjusted based on the physical foundation and living habits of the elderly.

I have worked as a front-line nurse in a community elderly care service station for three years, and I have seen too many pitfalls caused by copying the "universal health care guide". Not long ago, 72-year-old Aunt Zhang was diagnosed with diabetes and mild knee arthritis. Her children browsed the "Elderly Health Guide" online, bought her a whole box of protein powder and sugar-free bird's nests, and forced her to walk 8,000 steps a day. After only half a month, Aunt Zhang was admitted to the hospital due to an acute attack of gout and an ankle sprain. A blood test revealed that she had a basic disease of high uric acid. Taking too many high-protein supplements only increased the metabolic burden. Her knees were not good and she had to walk hard, which directly sprained her foot.

Take the matter of drinking water as an example. Popular science now calls for "drinking 2000ml of water a day to detoxify." However, the physicians we contacted repeatedly emphasized that for elderly men with prostatic hyperplasia, or those with heart or kidney insufficiency, drinking too much water will aggravate edema, increase the frequency of waking up at night, and easily induce falls. Drinking 1000-1200ml a day is enough. There is really no need to force drink. There is also controversy over diet. In the past two years, everyone has been saying that the elderly should eat a light diet and that it is best to be vegetarian. In the past two years, the nutrition guidelines have been updated: Elderly people over 80 years old lose muscle mass three times as fast as young people. Long-term vegetarian diet is very easy to develop sarcopenia - to put it bluntly, it means walking with wavy hair, If the grip strength is not enough, it is easy to fracture if you fall. Instead, make sure to eat 1 egg and 2 taels of lean meat every day. For underweight elderly people, it doesn’t matter even if they eat a couple of fatty ones occasionally. You don’t need to be too stuck on the “low-fat and low-salt diet”.

Oh, by the way, many people caring for the elderly focus on various physical examination indicators and completely miss the psychological needs. I have made this mistake before. I took care of my 81-year-old Uncle Li. He suffered a stroke and the left side of his body was weak. At first, I helped him with everything, including feeding, dressing, and getting water cups. As a result, he became more and more silent, and sometimes even pushed the bowl to the ground on purpose. Later, the rehabilitation doctor reminded me that even if the old man can take 5 minutes to take a spoon and take a sip of porridge, it is better than you feeding him in 1 minute. What he wants is not "being taken care of in every possible way", but the sense of value of "I can still do things on my own." Later, we deliberately left some simple tasks for him to do, such as asking him to help choose vegetables and water the flowers, and he talked obviously more. Of course, many family members think that the elderly are slow in doing things and are prone to falling and bumping, so it is better to have them all covered to save trouble. In fact, there is no absolute right or wrong in either view. The key is to grasp the balance: things that involve climbing high or touching the power supply must be stopped, but for small things such as dressing, eating, and clearing the table, letting go as long as you can is really better than doing everything.

As for the risk prevention and control that everyone is most concerned about, let me tell you what happened last month: an old man fell in the bathroom at home, and his children rushed to help him up as soon as possible. When they helped him up, they found that the old man’s hip bone hurt so much that he could not move. He went to the hospital to check that it was a fracture of the femoral neck. The fracture position was not displaced originally, but it was directly misaligned when they helped him. Later, he had a joint replacement. Regarding whether to help an elderly person if he has fallen down, the common wisdom among the people is to help him up quickly and not to freeze or lie down. However, the advice from the medical side is to observe first: if the elderly person is conscious, ask him where it hurts and whether he can move. If he suspects a fracture or cerebral hemorrhage, do not move blindly and call 120 immediately and wait for professionals to deal with it. If it is just a scratch and nothing serious, it is not too late to help him up slowly. There are also many people who buy the hotly-hyped "senior shoes" for the elderly, saying they have soft soles and are comfortable. Our site has previously conducted anti-slip tests in conjunction with community health centers. The soles of many Internet-famous elderly shoes are extremely slippery when exposed to water. If you step on them with shower gel in the bathroom, they are more likely to fall than wearing plastic slippers. On the contrary, they are not as reliable as old cloth shoes that have been washed a little bit, or regular non-slip sports shoes. You don’t need to install handrails everywhere in your home. The most important places to install them are next to the toilet, in the shower area, and at the head of the bed. These three places are prone to falls. If you install them too much in other places, it will be easy to bump into them, which is not worth the gain.

Oh, yes, I have summed up a little trick that is not included in the care guide: first touch the hands and feet of an elderly person every day when you see them. If they suddenly become cold, or there is edema that does not bounce back when pressed, there is a high probability that there is a circulation or kidney problem. It is often discovered two or three days earlier than the elderly person says he is not feeling well, which can save a lot of trouble.

In fact, there is really no standard answer to caring for the elderly. No matter how many one, two, three, or four listed on the Internet, it is not as good as spending an extra two days observing the habits of your elderly family member. If he likes sweets, don't let him eat any of them. He'll be fine if he takes a few bites. ； If he likes to go for a walk, walk slowly with him. Don't be stuck on the steps. ； If he wants to chat a few words, just sit down and listen, don't bother him all the time. To put it bluntly, making the elderly comfortable and content is more important than any "scientific standards".