Do You Need the Help of a Caregiver For a Bedridden Loved One in the Bay Area?

Are you currently in a situation where hiring a caregiver seems like the best option for you to give proper care to your bedridden loved one? Although home care services in the Bay Area are often needed for several reasons, there are serious cases where the services of a caregiver are needed the most.

A lot of people in the Bay Area do not always have the luxury of time to stay around and take good care of their loved ones with certain illnesses. This is always a very challenging moment for most people when their loved ones are battling life-threatening diseases, and they are not always available to take care of them. If this sounds like your present predicament, hiring the best caregiver services should be your best option. Well, there are things you need to consider before taking this step.

The first thing you need to do is determine who will be the primary caregiver for your bedridden loved one. There are a lot of problems that come with giving care responsibilities to bedridden patients. The right person for this task must be ready to handle these problems while ensuring effective home care service delivery to the ailing person. At times, the person seeking this form of help can be surrounded by more than one caregiver if the situation requires it. This usually has to do with knowing the person's ailment or condition.

While you might have already concluded plans to hire any caregiver service in the Bay Area, getting a medical practitioner to diagnose the person should be the best thing to do. That way, you will know whether the person's condition needs immediate medical interventions or not. If the condition can be managed without necessarily visiting the hospital, knowing the individual's condition will help the caregiver know what the person is passing through and what sort of assistance can be given.

If the individual needs some sort of medical assistance, the best form of assistance that can be given is to hire a medical caregiver or an in-home nurse in the Bay Area. These are professionals who have been trained to give medical assistance to patients right in the comfort of their homes. Monitoring and administering prescribed drugs to bedridden patients in the comfort of their homes is a task that requires the help of a professional. Unless the person's condition is not medical, in-home nursing services are usually recommended. Aside from attending to the medical needs of the patients, medical caregivers are not restricted to medical needs alone, and they can also provide the services of a regular caregiver.

Before you finally get consumed by the responsibility of providing home care services in the Bay Area to a bedridden loved one, you should also know some of the health risks of bedridden patients and possibly how to prevent them.

Common complications or health risks of bedridden patients.

In most cases, bedridden patients are either suffering from full or partial paralysis due to medical conditions like a stroke and others. So, a bedridden patient can be getting the best services from caregivers and still watch his or her condition deteriorating into serious complications.

Your bedridden loved one can have any of these complications:

1. Lung infections

This is one of the problems commonly experienced by bedridden patients. The majority of this set of people find it difficult to swallow their food. This difficulty usually results in lung infections. At this stage, a bedridden patient will find it difficult to eat. However, medical practitioners have their way of fixing this problem by passing a tube right into the stomach of the patient so that liquid foods can be administered.

Until proper tests are taken, some of the symptoms of a lung infection include shallow breathing, fever, coughing, etc. However, to prevent the condition from deteriorating, get your doctor to diagnose the person.

2. Constipation

This usually results in constipation, a state of the bowels in which intestines are filled with hardened feces. So, the passing of stools becomes very difficult and infrequent. Bedridden patients usually experience this when they don't have enough fiber in their food. At times, this occurs due to repressing bowel movements. In most cases, there are drugs for bedridden patients to alleviate their conditions.

3. Bedsores

Because bedridden patients are always confined to bed, the part of their bodies that makes contact with the bed will not get enough blood. When this happens, the tissues in that area will be affected, leading to the appearance of red sores. With time, the skin in this part of the body begins to peel and might end up developing into a shallow wound.

When nothing is done, the person risks getting serious infections. However, you can prevent this by hiring a caregiver who will constantly change the lying position of the bedridden patient.

4. Urinary tract infections

Bedridden patients do not have the chance to visit the toilet at will, so there is a need for the insertion of a catheter. However, prolonged usage of this tube can cause urinary tract infections. Depending on the nature of this infection, an individual might find it hard to urinate through the catheter. This condition can be prevented from leading to serious complications by ensuring that the individual drinks enough water. Bedridden patients should regularly keep the point of insertion of the catheter clean.

In most cases, bedridden patients often find themselves incapacitated to do a lot of things on their own, which is why the idea of hiring private nurses in the Bay Area is a brilliant one. You are not only paying to ensure effective home care services for your bedridden loved one, but you are also paying to keep them under constant monitoring so that their condition doesn't deteriorate.

However, the most important thing is to ensure that you are getting a qualified caregiver for this job. Check their qualifications and hire only if they are perfect for your requirements.