Menu planning in care homes: 6 things to know

There are no two ways that food is integral to the quality of life for the residents in care homes. Mealtime is something that the residents usually look forward to. However, providing a diverse menu which is exciting as well as nutritional can be challenging. While the nutritional value is important, it is equally crucial to ensure that the food items on the menu in care homes are not bland and repetitive. If you wish to design menus for care homes, here are a few things that you should keep in mind:

Offer variety: The menu you design must encourage the residents to eat a variety of foods. It should have a good quantity of vegetables, fruits, proteins, grains, and dairy. Make sure that the produce you buy is fresh. It would be best to serve fruits and vegetables that are locally produced. To plan well-rounded meals, make sure your meals consist of all the varieties.
Address special needs: While planning a menu, do keep in mind special dietary requirements. You can work with a nutritionist to help you make choices that fit the medical conditions of different residents. For instance, some people with dementia may be a problem with sight while others may have a problem with chewing. For those with dementia, efforts should be made to ensure that food is a colorful and verbal description of the food that should be given. For those who have problems chewing, the texture of the food should be moist and soft.
Special menu for special occasions: Mealtime plays an important social role. It is that time of the day when the residents sit together and enjoy the food. Make sure that there is a difference between everyday meals and special occasions. Having a holiday special menu will help them connect with the outside world.
Rotating menu: When tasked with providing three meals a day that complies with nutritional standards, it is quite easy for the caregivers to run out of ideas. The best way to not let the menu planning be too overwhelming is to come with a six-week meal plan. Planning meals in advance will not ensure that the residents are not eating the same food every now and this will also streamline pantry planning.
Group activity: Planning meals can be so much fun if you include the residents in it. Not only will you as caregivers get help but the residents will feel more interested in eating food that they have helped prepare. You can also create a weekly roster for the menu as well as the residents who will be helping. This will make the residents feel more involved. Make sure the seniors are assisted so that they are safe in the kitchen.
Seek feedback: It’s best to take the residents on board so that the menu is designed with their involvement. Take the feedback of the residents and their family members and on them to improve your food menu. Talk to your residents about their experiences at mealtimes. If you want in-depth feedback, you can ask them to fill up questionnaires.

Apart from menu planning there several other responsibilities that care home staff have to take care of. Proper administration of medicines is one of the primary duties of caregivers. You can streamline this task by using eMAR, an electronic medication software. The software sends alerts to the staff regarding the dosage, timing and route of administration. The software makes sure that the staff doesn’t have to rely on paper-based MAR sheets in care homes for medicine administration. By keeping a tab on medicine administration, the software helps to reduce medication errors. If you are still using paper-based MAR sheets in care homes, then book an eMAR demo (https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/book-a-demo/) with us today.

Care home managers: how to spot caregiver depression?

Despite their medical training, care workers, at times, are themselves unable to recognize the signs when they experience depression. They may shrug off depression symptoms such as fatigue, moodiness, and concentration problems to everyday stress. It’s important for you to check for signs of depression in your staff so that they stay emotionally healthy and maintain their work quality. Here are some practical ways to spot caregiver depression and steps to tackle them:

1) Not being able to complete all the scheduled work

If a caregiver in your care home team is all of a sudden facing difficulties in completing the tasks assigned to him/her, it can be one of the primary signs of depression. Depression lowers concentration which, in turn, negatively affects productivity and overall performance.

Unfinished tasks can mean workload-related caregiver depression. Talk to the caregiver to learn if he/she is overburdened with work. If yes, focus on optimizing workload so that the caregiver can deliver better results.

Using eMAR (electronic medication administration records) can lessen the workload of your care staff. Electronic MAR automates several medication management processes such as preparing new MAR records, transcribing doctor’s prescription, and auditing MAR records. Learn more about how your caregiving team can benefit from electronic MAR at https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/emar/.

2) Lack of attentiveness

Poor attentiveness is another sign of depression to look out for in your care workers. Care workers experiencing depression may show up at work and team meetings and not be fully present. Lack of attentiveness can also increase the risk of human errors such as medication errors.

3) Low self-confidence

Depression also lowers self-confidence. When self-confidence in your care workers sinks, they may not be able to make certain decisions the right way. And when the decisions are related to medication management, resident health is put at risk.

How can you help your care staff?

If you notice these signs of depression in any of your team members, then encourage other team members to talk to them. Also, ask them to take breaks in between work. It’s equally important to provide skill training in order to help your care workers improve their performance.

Improve the professional well-being of your care workers by reducing repetitive and manual tasks

eMAR, with its cutting-edge features, can reduce manual tasks and help care workers focus more on important work such as planning meals for the residents and engaging activities to help the residents live a healthy and fulfilling life. This helps care workers achieve professional satisfaction. Learn how eMAR has helped care homes across the UK with safe and efficient medication administration https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/emar/

Senior Activity Ideas for New Year’s Eve

Celebrating the new year at care homes doesn’t mean that the elderly residents have to wait until the clock strikes. They can have their celebrations when the clock strikes 12 in the afternoon. If you are looking for New Year’s activities that are well-suited for older adults, you are on the right page. Here are a few ideas to bring cheer to your care homes:

Host a lunch party: Ring in the new year with a celebratory lunch that is indulgent yet healthy. Drinking may not be a good idea for aging adults but toasting to mocktails and non-alcoholic beverages can give them a festive feel to start the new year. Make sure that the party has all the festive decorations like balloons, party poppers, and hats, etc. You can also organize a brunch wherein residents countdown to 12 o’clock noon.
Reflect upon the last year: Invite residents to reflect upon the last year and ask them to list the things that they loved doing in 2019. You ask them to make a small card with highlights of 2019 like the birth of a grandchild or wedding of a child, etc.
Have a sing-along: There’s no party without music. Make a playlist of popular songs and have the seniors to sing along. Singing and music will help keep holiday blues at bay. You can also distribute the lyrics on a printed sheet so that everyone can participate.
Have family come over: For many senior residents, the holiday season has nothing to do with gifts, but it has more to do with family and friends. You can have their family and friends to come over and spend time with them. If that is not possible, then arranging a video call with the family will make seniors feel good. Living in a care home can be lonely, keeping seniors connected with the family, reassures them that they are not forgotten.
Make a new year gift: You can also ask seniors to make cards for their family or fellow residents. Making a card with glitter or stringing together beads for making a necklace can be fun for seniors. They can make one craft item for each person coming to the care home for the celebrations.
Plan an outing: Stay at care homes can be quite boring. To break the monotony, plan a day trip to a museum or a concert or a game. Going out during the holiday season will make them feel connected to the outside community. Make sure that seniors with limited mobility have assistance.

Improve care quality at your care home with eMAR – a cutting-edge electronic medication system

Electronic MAR sheets at care homes can help your care staff administer medicines efficiently and effectively. To know how to reduce medication administration errors at your care homes, book an eMAR demo with us today.

How to encourage activities in care homes?

Planning and scheduling activities are an important part of providing person-centered care in your care home. However, things may not always go as planned. You may put a great deal of effort into planning activities only to see no participation from the residents.

To make sure that your efforts are not wasted, follow these steps to encourage activities and help the residents maintain good physical and mental health:

1) Focus on residents’ interest

One of the best ways to encourage residents’ participation is to plan activities that are based on their interests. To get started with this, find the common interest areas and create resident groups accordingly. For example, if a group of residents enjoys gardening, plan garden-based activities such as growing fruits and flowers, watering plants, and raking leaves.

Often, planning and scheduling care home activities are challenging for the care staff due to time constraints. Care home staff members have to do a myriad of tasks – and one of them is managing and administering medication. Manual tasks such as transcribing new prescriptions, double-checking, and counting medications take up a lot of time. These processes can be automated using electronic MAR and care workers can save time to focus more on planning activities. Learn how electronic MAR can work for your care home at https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/emar/.

2) Involve them in activity planning sessions

When planning new activities or arranging activity schedules, care staff can encourage the residents to be a part of the tasks. Doing this can help the residents develop a sense of belonging to the activity groups. Asking residents for their inputs can also encourage them to socialize with each other. By taking ideas from the residents, the care staff can add more variations in care activities.

3) Invite family members for participation

Another simple way to encourage activity participation is to invite residents’ family members to the activity sessions. The involvement of family members means more confidence in residents to participate in the activities.

Encouraging family involvement can help new residents feel more comfortable in participating in the activities and interacting with others. Also, family members can contribute to activity planning and lend a helping hand in managing weekly or monthly activity sessions.

4) Include rewards

No activity or task is intriguing if there are no rewards. Include rewards such as food treats and family time to make the activities more alluring and encourage participation amongst the residents.

However, remember to go easy with the activities and do not make them overwhelming for the residents. The residents may not necessarily complete the tasks that are a part of the activities. Be flexible to allow them to continue the next day/week from where they left off.

Learn how you can improve care quality with the electronic medication administration system

Safe and accurate medication administration is an important part of care quality. Find out how your care home can reduce medication administration errors. Book an eMAR demo with us today.

Caregiving: 5 Tips for Carehome owners on how to guide new Caregivers

The beginning stages of caregiving, especially the initial months of joining a new care home can be challenging for new caregivers. And this is a normal part of getting familiar with the practical, real-life scenarios of a care home for new caregivers.

If you are a care home owner and have hired new caregivers, you can make their new journey in your care home a smooth sailing one with these tips:

1) Train them with the right medication administration practices

Getting medication administration right is crucial to ensuring medication safety of care home residents. As part of providing training to your new caregivers, it’s important to educate them about the 5 Rs of medication administration which includes right patient, right drug, right dose, right route, and right time.

Another important step to making administering medication less of a challenge for new caregivers is to use eMAR (electronic MAR charts). Electronic MAR simplifies the complexities involved with conventional MAR charts. It eliminates the paper-based hassles associated with MAR charts . Learn how electronic MAR can work for your care home at https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/emar/.

2) Ask them to respect the privacy of the residents
The key to providing the right care to care home residents is to striking the right balance between assisting them and respecting their privacy. It’s crucial to teach new caregivers about the importance of maintaining the residents’ dignity.

For example, if a particular resident prefers changing his/her clothes or use the washroom on their own, it’s important for the caregiver to respect their dignity. As part of ensuring proper safety of the resident, the caregiver can keep a close watch of the resident.

3) Encourage them to plan their daily work schedule

Given the number of tasks that are to be done in care homes every day, care workers can get overburdened and burn out. Therefore, it’s important for new caregivers to learn to plan their daily work schedule.

4) Encourage them to take breaks

New caregivers aren’t familiar with the working environment of care homes. Therefore, they can easily stress out. As part of ensuring the well-being of the residents, make sure to encourage them to take breaks in between the working hours. Taking breaks help caregivers stay productive and maintain efficiency in their work.

5) Scheduling and planning for activities

Activities and family visits are an integral part of providing holistic care to care home residents. Activities such as household chores, story-telling, and family visits are of a great help when it comes to ensuring that the residents do not experience loneliness. It’s important to teach new caregivers to include the right activities as part of scheduling the overall care plan.

With electronic MAR sheet medication administration and documentation, care workers can save time and focus on scheduling care home activities.

Important steps of safe medication administration

The primary goal of administering medication through a structured approach is to ensure optimum safety. However, human errors involved in the medication administration processes can compromise this objective.

Human errors can occur at any stage of medication administration, whether it be administering the right drug, measuring the right dosage, or following the right route. This is especially true when using conventional paper-based MAR sheets for medication.

To lower the risk of preventable human errors and improve medication administration safety, switch to electronic MAR charts of eMAR (electronic medication administration record).

Apart from using electronic MAR, your team can follow these steps to improve medication administration safety:

1) Labelling drugs with similar names

Drugs that have similar names, similar brand names, similar looks, or similar packaging are a threat to resident safety. Such drugs often create confusion when transcribing new prescriptions and/or administering drugs. Therefore, it’s important for the care workers to take extra caution when filling and dispensing such drugs.

One simple and inexpensive way to lower the risk of medication errors caused by sound-alike, look-alike drugs is to carefully label them in a distinct way. Care workers can write the names of the similar drug names in the label tags to make it easier to distinguish them.

2) Auditing MAR sheets to demonstrate accountability

In many care home systems, hidden issues such as a particular care staff member not following protocols or not reporting problems that have occurred with a specific medication can lower medication administration safety.

To make sure that there’s complete accountability within the care team, audit MAR sheets on a monthly basis. With electronic MAR, auditing electronic MAR sheets gets easy as the software has a built-in Medication Balance Calculator.

3) Educating the residents

It’s a good idea to let the residents learn about the purpose of the medication their doctors have prescribed them. Doing this helps in maintaining their safety when a new care staff member starts handling medication administration of a particular resident. Another upside of this is it empowers the residents to take caution about their medication safety.

4) Setting alerts for dosages

When administering medication, care workers, at times, miss out on giving a specific drug. This, in turn, leads to medication errors and compromises resident safety. To make sure that your care team doesn’t miss out on administering any drug, use electronic MAR’s alerts feature.

The software automatically sends alerts to the devices (using it) whenever a medication is due. This way, it becomes possible for care managers to build compliance.

Make the switch to electronic MAR sheet medication administration

Electronic MAR eliminates all the paper-based hassles involved with conventional MAR sheets and streamlines medication administration. The software is easy to use as it is designed to be a digital version of the traditional MAR sheets.

Difference between mar sheet medication & emar mar sheet medication

The number of complex processes involved in managing medication for care home residents call for medication management systems that are thorough. Using paper-based MAR (medication administration record) sheet medication management has been the convention in the care home sector.

However, many care homes in the UK are replacing conventional MAR sheet with electronic MAR. The software includes digital medication administration record templates that bear stark resemblance with conventional MAR sheets.

What are the key differences between the two? And which is the better option? Read the answers to these questions below:

1) Risk of medication errors – high in MAR sheet, low in electronic MAR

The risk of medication errors is often high in care homes using conventional MAR sheets. This is because paper-based MAR sheets involve a lot of manual processes associated with medication management of every resident.

However, this is not the case with electronic MAR as the software is designed to streamline medication management processes digitally. By eliminating the paper-based hassles, electronic MAR lowers care staff stress. This, in turn, leads to improved productivity and lowered risk of medication errors.

2) Efficiency of care operations – low in MAR sheet, high in electronic MAR

Medication management processes are time-consuming, and working with comprehensive paper-based medication records add more to the time consumed. Which hampers the efficiency of the care team.

Electronic MAR is designed to produce electronic medication administration records for each resident. The single data entry point of electronic MAR eliminates the need to segregate and cross-check vital medication information manually, thus improving operational efficiency. Click Electronic MAR Learn more about .

3) Adaptability – low in MAR sheet, high in electronic MAR

Conventional MAR sheets aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution; pharmacists and/or care workers need to design or modify the paper-based MAR sheets as per the type and operations of the care home.

Unlike conventional MAR sheets, electronic MAR has a superior adaptability. The flexibility of making changes in a jiffy and seamlessly duplicating them makes electronic MAR an ideal medication management system for different types of care homes. Electronic MAR is suitable for Nursing Care, Dementia Care, Learning Disability Care, Elderly Care, Specialist Care, Rehabilitation Centres, and Short Term/Respite Care.

4) Accessibility – low in MAR sheet, high in electronic MAR

When it comes to creating month-end audits, accessibility matters a lot. In conventional MAR sheet medication management, care workers have to go through stacks of MAR sheets.

This is where the improved accessibility of electronic MAR becomes beneficial. The software makes it easy for care workers to collate data. The Medication Balance Calculator of electronic MAR makes auditing easy.

Make the switch to electronic MAR for improved care operations & resident safety

With electronic MAR, updating medication information, reviewing it, altering it, and auditing it is available at your fingertips. Consolidate your care home’s care operations, and improve care quality and resident safety by making the switch to electronic MAR.

5 Fun Activities for Dementia Patients at Care Homes

Fun activities are great for everyone. They benefit physical as well as cognitive health and this is particularly important for people who have disorders that affect their mood thinking and behaviour. Dementia is one such progressive condition characterised by the decline in thinking, reasoning and memory. If you have patients with dementia at your care homes, it’s important that you develop practical efficient and meaningful leisure activities that help keep anxiety and depression at bay and encourage people with dementia to express themselves in a positive way. Here are a few activities that will help you get started:

1. Exercise and physical activity: Besides improved cardiovascular fitness and physical strength, exercise has many benefits to offer. Exercise helps to reduce the risk of falls as it improves the body’s posture. It improves memory and mood, encourages better sleep, maintains motor skills, and reduces irritability. Alternate among walking, Yoga, Tai Chi, gardening, and dancing to keep things from getting boring. While introducing these exercises make sure that the safety of the patients is the top priority. Design the programme as per a person’s health and current physical abilities.

2. Sensory activities: Sensory activities like arts and craft, baking and pottery are effective for calming nerves. Simple touch-based activities that occupy their hands sooth them and give them a positive sense of feeling. Expressing themselves creatively help people with dementia to have a sense of purpose and it encourages social interaction. Tailor these activities taking into account an individual’s needs and preferences.

3. Music therapy: Music can be comforting and soothing. It helps people with dementia relax and elicit and positive emotions. Karaoke and sing-along activities are great as they are more engaging and interactive in nature than just listening to music. A group singing session is great for encouraging a feeling of community.

4. Simple fun games: Board games like jigsaw puzzles, dominoes, scrabble and snake and ladder, can make afternoon teatime fun and less boring. As these games involve a certain amount of focus, they will increase alertness and keep people with dementia in a good mood. While selecting the board games, make sure that they are visually colourful so that people with vision issues find them easy to handle.

5. Outdoor activities: A change of scenery is beneficial for everyone. A picnic at the local park, a visit to the museum or animal pet farm, fishing and going for movies not just bring a sense of happiness and joy, it also gives them a sense of individuality.

Caring for an individual with dementia can be challenging and, at times, overwhelming. Using eMAR at your care homes can help caregivers spend more meaningful time on productive activities rather than paperwork. Our electronic mar sheet can help you streamline the medication administration process and reduce the risk of errors. To know how our software can help your care homes, visit https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/care-homes/dementia-care/.

Ensuring Quality Care for Dementia Patients at Care Homes

Caring for people with dementia can be daunting and challenging. It is one of the most common conditions that affect the elderly. It’s not a specific disease but a broad term used to define decline or loss of reasoning, memory, and other mental abilities. If you are caring for someone with dementia, you must remember that the symptoms of dementia vary from person to person. The decline is progressive, making everyday activities such as household chores and personal care. Educating caregivers at care homes is among the many important measures to ensure quality care for dementia patients.

Here are a few ways of ensuring that people with dementia have a good quality of life at care homes:

1. Create awareness about dementia: Having in-depth knowledge about dementia can help caregivers to develop skills to better meet the need of people with dementia and their families. Knowing that dementia is more than just memory loss and how symptoms change and challenges progress can help caregivers demonstrate a great understanding and help develop skills to identify the needs of the patients on the behavioural cues rather than verbal cues.

2. Ensuring a safe environment: Falls and fall-related injuries are often common among the elderly, and more common among those with dementia. The reason could be anything from physical frailty, inactivity, multiple medications and new surroundings. From bed rails to grab bars at bathrooms, there are countless products to make your care home safe for anyone at risk of falls.

3. Having a person-centred approach: A person-centred care approach ensures that caregivers take into account each individual’s unique qualities, abilities, interests, preferences and needs. A person with dementia may need help with personal care like bathing, feeding and cleaning. This should be done while ensuring respect and dignity.

4. Organise stimulating activities: For dementia patients, lack of stimulation can be boring and frustrating. Ensuring that they engage in fun-filled activities can help reduce agitation and anxiety. Music, visual arts, drama, and gardening will not just promote a sense of busyness but also help them with their ability to process logic. Sensory activities like gardening, setting the dinner table and baking can give them a sense of pride.

5. Establish effective communication: Improving communication skills with a person with dementia makes caregiving less daunting and improves caregivers’ relationship with the patient. Make sure that you address the patient with his or her name so that you have the attention. To make sure that you are being understood, use nonverbal cues. Avoid convoluted sentences. Use simple words and sentences to get your message across.

Let eMAR help dementia care homes

To make efficient use of caregiver’s time, streamlining the medication administration by using eMAR, software that replaces conventional paper-based MAR sheets with electronic mar charts. Caregivers can access mar sheet medication on smartphones and tablets. This will reduce medication errors and will give caregivers more time to give person-centred care. To know how eMAR can help your care home increase operational efficiency, visit https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/care-homes/dementia-care/.

How to Help the Residents Cope with Moving Into a Care Home?

Residents look forward to their golden years as it’s the much-deserved reward that they have earned after years of hard work. However, a decline in health and age-related issues often make things complicated to the point that one has to make a difficult choice of living in a care home. As a caretaker, it is for you to ensure that the move into a care home is as smooth as possible and the resident sees care home as a positive action.

Here are a few tips to help residents feel that moving into a care home is a positive step:

1. Make them feel welcome: For many residents moving into a care home can be emotionally and physically difficult. To make this transition gentle, make sure your residents are made to feel welcomed. Welcoming new residents with banners or welcome cards can be quite inviting. Make the existing members meet the new residents. Encourage other residents to introduce themselves to the new member or give a tour of the care home.

2. Let the new resident take time: This can be done simply by not presuming that the resident needs help. Let the resident feel in control of the decision being taken regarding him or her. Let the resident be as independent as he/she wants to be. Be ready to lend an ear to the resident and be cautious that the emotions may run high, especially if the move to care home wasn’t planned.

3. Involve the family and relatives: Let the family and relatives of the new resident be part of the care home community activities. Encourage them to regularly visit the resident. Finding ways for family and relatives to play an active role in the care home can ease the transition. Encourage the resident to stay in touch with family and relatives. Regular phone calls and emails to friends and family can be therapeutic.

4. Find areas of interest: Invest some time with family and relatives of the new resident to find out what interests him or her. To foster socialisation and encourage a community-like feeling, get the new resident involved in group activities like gardening, singing, and yoga.

Improve operational efficiency with electronic MAR

Keeping a tab on medications of all residents, especially new ones, at care homes can be quite overwhelming. You, like several care homes in the UK, can streamline medication administration by integrating electronic MAR into their care management. eMAR automates the process of distributing, tracking, and re-ordering medications and eliminates manual tracking. Learn how eMAR can help your care home improve operational efficiency and quality of care at https://www.electronicmar.co.uk/emar/.

Guidelines for Caregivers on how They Can Communicate Better with Adults Suffering from Learning Disabilities

When caring for people with learning disabilities, it is very important that you are able to understand them well and make yourself clearly understood. Effective communication is especially important for people with learning disabilities as they often rely on the support of others to do daily tasks. Here are a few tips to make effective communication with people with learning disabilities:

1. Take your time: People with learning disabilities have different levels of communication difficulty. As a caregiver, you must give yourself time to assess whether your patient is someone with mild communication difficulty or severe difficulty. After allowing yourself this additional time to exchange information, you as a caregiver would be able to choose the level and pace of language. Instead of rushing the communication, take your time.

2. Don’t assume things: Some people have better communication skills than expressive skills while some don’t express well but comprehend easily. One may assume that a person’s with expressive speech is comprehending well. Some people may respond to your question but after much delay. Therefore, understand the rhythm of communication that different adults with learning difficulties have.

3. Face-to-face communication: The best way to communicate with a person with learning disabilities is to have a face-to-face chat. Use easily understandable words, and speak slowly and clearly. Always check with the person if they understand what you are saying. If you are communicating through text, use bigger text and bullet points. Don’t use too many colours as it can be distracting.

4. Use objects and images to communicate: Through visuals and objects, you can communicate better with some adults with learning disabilities. A visual checklist is a great way to remind an adult with learning disabilities to accomplish different tasks. Visual aids are often easier to communicate to some adults who may not respond to spoken words. However, while choosing visual aids, selection should be made on the basis of a person’s abilities and communication needs.

5. Look for non-verbal cues: A person with learning disabilities may try to communicate with you by their body language and facial expressions. When you are asking a question, make a facial expression to reinforce what you are saying. Facial expressions and nonverbal cues can help you as a caregiver understand the person better and the person too will feel at ease to express himself or herself. For this, you need to be more patient, observant and flexible.

6. Use positive sentences: Some people with learning disabilities may show challenging behaviour like restlessness, anxiety, and anger control problems. Instead of using negative sentences like ‘you can’t do this now’, use positive sentences like ‘we will do this tomorrow’.

For care home staff, daily work can be quite overwhelming and on top of it, managing MAR sheets manually can be time-consuming. To help caregivers devote time for personal care to the residents, switch to electronic MAR, a smart alternative to MAR sheets. Not only does eMAR streamline medication administration and save care workers’ time, but it also reduces human error. To learn more about eMAR, visit https://www.electronicmar.co.uk.

After Surgery: Tips to Care for a Patient in a Care Home

Recovering from surgery can be a not-so-pleasant experience for a patient. However, as an elderly caregiver, you have to extend extensive professional care to ensure the healing process is smooth. The challenges of post-operative recovery care and ensuring that normalcy is back in a resident’s life requires a different approach.

Here are a few tips that can help you promote post-operative healing and improve the resident’s overall health:

Plan ahead: You can make your resident’s recovery a lot smoother if you take a little time to plan ahead. Depending upon the kind of surgery a patient had, you can prepare the physical environment to support the post-surgery needs. If your resident needs special gear like crutches, oxygen tanks, elevated toilets, shower seats, make sure you equip the room with those.
Personalised tailored care: Post-surgery there may be a need for re-dressing wounds, special supplies, medications, pain management, catheter, and colostomy bag maintenance. All these needs must be kept in mind and personalised care must be provided. As a caregiver, it is important that you keep a close contact with the resident’s doctor so that you can if there’s any problem at any point in time contact him or her.
Minimise disruption: Post-surgery often patients are susceptible to infections and, therefore, it is important to minimise the disruption in the room of the patient concerned. People often get dizzy and irritable after being in bed for days. Anything like bright lights and too many people can be bothersome for the patient.
Physical therapy: Physical therapy is an essential component of post-operative rehabilitation. It helps regain mobility and enhance the healing process. Depending upon the surgery and physical capabilities, you can introduce physical therapy as part of the resident’s daily care.
Resuming to normal activities: Surgery is not just physically difficult but also emotionally tough. It is good for residents’ emotional well-being that they return to regular activity levels. For this, start gradually taking them to activities that they used to be part of. Don’t overdo as it can be quite exerting. Go slow and take one activity or two at a time.
Medication: From patient to patient, medicines used before, during, and after the surgery may change. As a caregiver ensure that there’s an overall review of the mar sheet medication of the patient and no one medicine is prescribed twice. Take help of electronic mar charts to streamline the process.

Improve the quality of care in your care home using eMAR

For care home staff, caring for a resident post-surgery can be quite overwhelming. To devote time for personal care to the residents, switch to electronic MAR, a smart alternative to paper MAR sheets. With electronic MAR charts, you can put an end to manually managing MAR sheets. eMAR streamlines medication administration and gives you time to give quality senior citizen health care. To learn more about eMAR, visit https://www.electronicmar.co.uk.