Old folks in our families need special care and attention to prolong both the length as well as the quality of their lives. The same applies to other family members like your kids, your spouse, and even yourself. But the rigors of our day-to-day activities may complicate our chances of giving that focused care to a member of our family in the right time and manner. That said, we must navigate through these hurdles to ensure our loved ones get the best care available.
Health care for the family
The elderly are especially prone to diseases like osteoarthritis, gout, cardiac disease, hypertension, etc. You have to be intentional about helping them stay healthy. As for the kids, you know how kids are, they don’t always make the best choices. As such, you will need to make the best decisions for them to keep them healthy. Then what about your spouse? Work and responsibilities might be taking their toll on him or her, and at the same time, he or she might not be such a fan of living healthily. You have to take care of that one too!
Read Also: Facts For Patients & Caregivers: When Is The Right Time To Call Hospice?
Don’t forget about yourself! You have to be proactive about living healthy.
The question is how can you cater to the health concerns of these different groups of people?
Ways to make sure your family receives the best healthcare
If you are looking to give your loved ones the best healthcare, at the same time, then your best bet is signing your family members on renowned online franchises, like Omcare, that provide services to help care for your family members. These services include
Prepackaged medication
These are repackaged pills in the exact dose that the doctors prescribe. This encourages compliance in your loved ones. It also boosts patient safety as it eliminates the likelihood of overdosing.
Home Delivery
It gets better, you totally can avoid the stress of taking trips to the pharmacy to purchase and have the medication delivered to your doorsteps. This relieves the congestion in hospitals and clinics and also lowers the risk of contracting hospital-acquired infections, hence stemming the extensive spread of highly contagious infections like coronavirus.
It could help you cut costs as home-delivered purchases are more economical.
If after careful consideration by the hospital authorities, they affirm that your loved one is qualified for virtual hospital care. Don’t hesitate to accept the telehealth offers.
Read Also: Healthy Aging: 7 Relaxing And Therapeutic Activities For Seniors
Regular Checkups
The importance of regular checkups cannot be overemphasized. The health conditions of the elderly should be closely monitored. The problem is, that frequent trips and waiting in queues to meet the doctors can wear anyone out.
But not to worry, your loved ones can sit in the comfort of their homes and get to meet the physicians virtually. In addition, they can also get to interact with different support groups that share similar aims.
Internet Of Things (IoT) Healthcare:
This heralds another leap in healthcare technology.
This has drastically reduced the cost of healthcare and the length of hospital stays. There are several ways the Internet Of Things can be utilized in the healthcare arena, but one of the most recognized is remote monitoring. These are aided by wearable gadgets that enable healthcare professionals to monitor the patients’ healthcare remotely. Examples include
- Devices for glucose monitoring: This is particularly important if your elderly ones have diabetes mellitus, it gives the doctor continuous and automatic access to the patient’s glucose level fluctuations.
- Devices for cardiac activity monitoring: This is quite useful for the elderly that have a history of any cardiac disease, or heart surgery. This goes without saying, it is far more convenient than the orthodox cumbersome devices like an electrocardiogram that leaves your loved one wired up.
- Devices for monitoring the state of hand hygiene: Devices as such have never been as important as they are now with the coronavirus lurking around ready to rear its ugly head with the slightest chance. Not only do these devices tell the level of hand hygiene, but they also instruct on how to sanitize the hands properly.
- Devices for monitoring mood and depression: As the name implies, they can help us anticipate spells of depression and mood swings. They do these by taking readings of the heart rate, blood pressure, and other parameters and based on a predetermined algorithm define the mental state. By using the information, healthcare professionals can then act accordingly.
- Connected Inhalers: This is very useful in asthmatics in monitoring the severity and frequency of asthmatics episodes. This in turn helps the healthcare provider in collating data about this condition.
Read Also: Telemedicine in the United States Has Revealed Major Social Inequalities
Motivate Your Family To live healthily
To keep your family healthy and happy, you must encourage them to make lifestyle choices that will boost their health and help prevent some diseases. Some lifestyle modifications include:
- Exercise: The sedentary lifestyle of behind-the-desk work might be the deadliest part of that type of job. Lack of ample activity during the day can facilitate the buildup of dangerous toxic substances in the body that would have been otherwise eliminated if we lived a more active and productive life. Encourage your family to get at least one hour of exercise. This goes a long way to solving a lot of health problems.
- Enough sleep: Like the nursery rhyme “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man, healthy, wealthy and wise”, sleep is important to function optimally. Sleep is often an underestimated contributor to good health. Encourage your loved ones to take naps. Sleep time should be kept religiously if possible. It gives the mind time to recharge and improves the mental status and mood while relieving stress
- Eat healthily: As they say, “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away.” The dangers of making poor feeding choices are disastrous. Ensure you eat as much fresh fruit as possible. Try snacking less at work, or make the effort to search for a healthy snack for you and the kids. Maintain the daily routine of three balanced meals a day
- Avoid smoking and alcohol: The dangers of smoking and alcohol are many. They are important triggers of several diseases including lung cancers, heart disease, mental illness, chronic liver damage, mouth and throat cancers, and a lot of other diseases. So, if your loved ones are caught in the web of this habit, you have a lot of support to do. If they have developed strong dependence you may have to sign them up for rehabilitation programs and support groups
- Vacation: If money is no object, a vacation should be among the top items on your to-do list. Great choice of vacation improves physical health, mental health, interpersonal relationships, mood, motivation, and happiness, and decreases burnout. I believe it’s high time you started making plans to visit the Maldives (or wherever) you have been postponing for a while now.
Read Also: 5 Important Considerations For Hospice Care
Conclusion
Health care is evolving, fast. That said, you have to keep up with it to enjoy it. You now have the option to employ the numerous less stressful and pretty convenient ways you can ensure that your loved ones receive the best health care possible
References
12 healthy habits for families – Mayo Clinic Health System
MedStar Health Blog | 10 tips to keep your family healthy while at home. – MedStar Health Blog
FEEDBACK: