How to know when it is time to put your parent in a nursing home
WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN PARENT IS ADMITTED TO NURSING HOME
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so i am continuing on the topic of how
family caregiving doesn't necessarily
end just because your parent
is in a facility last week's video was
all about parents who were in assisted
livings
this week i'm going to talk about how
family caregiving
doesn't necessarily end just because
your parent might be in a nursing home
hi there i'm sophia welcome to another
episode
i make weekly videos to help family
caregivers
navigate the resources the options and
all the ups and downs that go along with
aging parent
care i want the very best outcomes for
both you
and your parent so go ahead and
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i have heard a lot of family caregivers
say that the stress
of caregiving and the level of care that
they give their parents
is just more than they can handle so
they're thinking of moving their parent
into a nursing home
they think that this move means that
their caregiving stress
and hands-on care days are over
for some of you that might be true and i
hope so
but for others it's not even close and
for some of you that might be okay
especially if you enjoy the hands-on
caregiving
but for some of you it's not what you
expect it to be
it really does depend on the
circumstances
the facility what kind of person you are
and what kind of person and
issues your parent has so this is going
to be another reality check
video because i want you to know all the
possibilities
as you go into different situations that
parent care
takes you so i'm going to start off with
the hands-off ways
that you might continue to be involved
with your parent who is in a nursing
home
and most of these revolve around
communication communication with the
staff
including the doctors and the nurses and
other staff like social workers like it
or not it could be
a lot of communication with the staff or
at least by nurses
this means calls in the night calls on
the weekend
calls while you're at work or on
vacation and really they should be
calling you whenever there's
a change in condition or if there's some
behavior
issues or any time there's negative lab
results
or a change in medications as disruptive
as
these calls could be sometimes usually
it's necessary information it's
important information they have to call
you
but sometimes you're gonna be like uh
why are you calling me this is not that
important you know it's just not that
big a deal why are you calling me
well and the reason why they're calling
you is because they're required to
inform you and document that they
notified you
really not for any other reason they're
not calling to upset you
they might not even be calling to make
uh have you make a decision
but it's strictly for their
documentation requirements
so don't let every call become a big
deal
or a stress for you because it's
often not that if your parent is more
stable and they don't have a lot of
changes
then you probably should expect not very
many of these calls
but if you do plan on being away on
vacation or a work trip
and you'd rather not receive a lot of
these calls then make sure that you call
the nursing home facility and let them
know that you're out of town
during these days and give them the name
and a phone number of
someone else that they could call
instead your backup person
you might also experience um repeated
calls from your own parent especially if
they have their own cell phone
um at their bedside you know receiving
10 calls a day from a parent who
who might have memory impairment
impairment
or they're calling you to accuse the
staff
of this and that or things are missing
or they're begging you to go home
this can be a huge stress for you and a
continued
disruption in your day this is when
you need to set some boundaries and take
care of yourself
by putting your phone on mute
or to let your parent know that no
matter how many times they call
you'll call them once or twice every day
and at what time you mean you're not
abandoning them but you're just setting
some boundaries
and no you cannot ask the staff to take
away their cell phone
they're not allowed to do that another
periodic opportunity for communication
is when the nursing home holds care plan
meetings
these are required quarterly
at the facility i work out we hold them
monthly for
all of the families this is when the
multidisciplinary team gets
together and talks about everything
that's been going
on with the resident since the last
meeting
and family should always be invited
pre-covert days family was invited to
come in
but now we're doing them over the phone
so plan
on putting some time aside for these
meetings now it's possible that you
might still be doing
hands-on care with your parent even
though
they're living in a nursing home this is
going to depend on your personality and
how
how much hands-on involvement you do
want to have
and it's also going to depend on the
nursing home i've worked in long-term
care for
years and i've seen the whole gamut of
care when it comes to families getting
involved
but yes you can provide care in a
nursing home if you want to
but you know what you certainly don't
have to
some families they're not able to accept
the realistic
amount of time that it takes things to
get done in a nursing home
so they jump in and they do things
themselves you could do things like
you know wash your parents face or brush
their hair
sometimes dress them or walk them if
that's been approved
i've seen families even change diapers
in the nursing home
and some families come in and feed their
parent
if their parent needs help with that no
one is going to tell you you have to do
these things
if doing this makes you happy then
that's great go ahead and see if you can
participate
but if you find yourself doing them and
then be
getting angry about it or resentful that
you're that you're intervening
then maybe it's time to look at your
options you could try to move your
parent to another facility if you're not
satisfied with the care
or you could have a civilized
conversation with the nursing manager
or the social worker about your concerns
and how hopefully work out a situation
so that you don't feel like
you have to be the one providing the
cure
you might even need to look at yourself
to see if you're being realistic
about your expectations of what the
nursing
staff can do in in what time limit
this is this is where i find a lot of
the problems arise
with families being dissatisfied one
other time that you might be asked by
staff to provide
assistance is if your parent has some
behavior issues
that they aren't able to manage
on an ongoing basis yes sometimes they
have sitters
who can stay with your parent but
realistically
they don't always have the staff who can
sit with your parent 24 hours a day
and sometimes you know what a stranger
just won't do
so you might get called away from your
life and asked to come in
to just sit with your parent and help
calm them down
nursing home placement certainly doesn't
always mean your family caregiver stress
or even hands-on care is over
it's going to depend on your parent it's
going to depend on you
and the facility so now you know what to
expect
feel free to go ahead and share today's
video with other caregivers who might
need this information
and check out my new website at
www.sofiamerport.com
take the quiz to see how confident you
are as a caregiver
here's a couple of more videos to tie
you over until next week
thanks so much for watching i'll see you
next time
