What is the content of daily care for the elderly?

The essence of daily care for the elderly is full-dimensional adaptive care based on the elderly's physiological characteristics, chronic diseases, living habits and psychological needs. The core is to help the elderly maintain a relatively comfortable and dignified living condition, rather than rigid process operations. I have worked as a front-line nurse in a community elderly care center for 7 years. When I first entered the industry, I thought it was just helping with basic tasks such as cooking, giving medicine, and cleaning and turning over. The longer I worked, the more I discovered that there are many more ways to do it than I imagined.

There used to be a 72-year-old hypertensive aunt Li Guilan. When she was first sent to day care, her family specifically told her to "just help my mother take antihypertensive medicines on time and provide her with a meal at noon." However, within three days of taking care of her, we discovered that her ankles would become swollen every time she took antihypertensive medicines. In the morning, she would sneak out to dance in the morning when the staff were not at work. The subzero weather made her hands cold, and her blood pressure went up. Later, every time we gave her medicine, we pinched her ankles to check the edema. We discussed with her old square dancing sisters to change the activity time to 9 a.m. when the sun was shining through before going out. We also prepared special fleece knee pads for her. In less than half a month, her blood pressure stabilized in the normal range. When her family members came to pick her up, they were surprised and said that they had not seen her in such good condition for a long time.

There has been an ongoing debate in the industry about how much help should be given to the elderly in daily care: one group thinks that the elderly should do their own thing and try not to interfere, so as to prevent the body functions from deteriorating faster and faster.； The other group thinks that since we have hired nursing staff, we must make the elderly comfortable and do nothing. I once met a Grandpa Wang who was recovering from a cerebral infarction. He could only eat with a spoon but he was slow to eat. Sometimes he would spill the food on the table. Every time his daughter came to see him, she would rush to feed him because she was afraid that he would scatter the food everywhere when he was tired. We tried to persuade him several times, saying that now was the time for him to exercise his fine motor skills and that if he kept feeding him, his recovery would be slower. Now, more than three months later, Grandpa Wang can hold a pen and write big characters by himself. His daughter now says that she was lucky that she didn't insist on feeding him.

Speaking of which, many people ignore that psychological care is also the highlight of daily care. Not long ago, there was an 84-year-old Grandpa Liu who lived alone. He was always getting angry with us. Either the food was too hard or the water was too hot. Even after changing several chefs, it didn't work. Later, we chatted with him for a long time before we found out that his son was out of town. I haven’t called him at work for almost two months. We secretly sent a message to his son saying that the old man has been talking about him recently. His son came back specially with his grandson on the weekend. The family had lunch at the care center. Grandpa Liu told us in the afternoon that "Today's cabbage stewed with tofu is more delicious than any other day."

There are also some detailed care contents, which are accumulated little by little in daily life. For example, when providing home care for an elderly person living alone, you must feel whether the radiator is hot before leaving, whether the ventilation gap left by the window is facing the head of the bed, whether the mobile phone of the elderly is placed beside the pillow within easy reach, whether the battery of the emergency caller is charged, and when the elderly bedridden for a long time wipes the body, they should specially feel whether the bony protrusions such as the sacrococcyx and ankles are red. Don't wait for pressure sores to develop. After working in this industry for so long, I always feel that there is no fixed list of daily care for the elderly. Everything revolves around "people", making the elderly live comfortably and with dignity, which is more effective than any standard process.