Home Health Aide Or Nursing Home Care? 4 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Choosing

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Choosing between hiring a live-in health aide and moving into a nursing home is a major, life-altering decision. Whether making the choice for yourself or someone you love, careful consideration of all variables is in order, to ensure the right decision is made and the most appropriate care is obtained. You have many questions to ask yourself, the answers to which should reveal the path you need to take.

1. What Level of Medical Care Is Needed?

One of the major factors in someone moving into a nursing home is the need for constant or intense medical care. While a nursing home offers high-level medical care, it's usually on a rotating (between other residents) or as-needed basis. You could choose a live-in home health aide who is well trained in various nursing skills, providing one-on-one care whenever needed. Both scenarios call upon emergency medical services for urgent situations and either scenario allows for regular doctor appointments and screenings.

The personalized care and individual attention offered by an in-home aide may be preferable to the alternative nursing home environment, if living in the home is a viable option considering all the challenges a person is facing, such as being physically able to use the facilities of the home independently.

2. How Important Is Staying in The Home At This Time?

Sometimes, the environment plays a key role in well-being and this is often the case for elderly people who wish to remain in their own homes. If a person is cognitive and able to enjoy different activities, they may very well respond better to staying in their home and receiving care from home health aides. That same person, placed in an unfamiliar, perhaps clinical, nursing home, could quickly decline both physically and mentally.

If you're the person faced with the choice of staying at home with an aide or moving into a nursing home, consider the quality of your life and how you want to live it and how each scenario could help you. A home health aide might also be a way to prolong one's ability to remain at home, even if a nursing home seems inevitable at some point in the future.

3. Is Socializing an Important Health Factor?

A pleasant benefit of nursing homes can be the ability to readily socialize, which is an important part of an elderly person's overall health. Even with an in-home aide, that person may not be getting the social energy they need whilst remaining in their home. If they can't get out much or doing so is especially challenging, they may be missing out on the healthy benefits of socialization, such as lower blood pressure, a decreased risk of becoming depressed, and improved immune protein production (interleukin-6).

4. What Can Pull the Entire Family Together?

Families are such an important part of an elderly person's life, they should be a consideration in the decision. Will an in-home aide relieve the burden of worry for the family? Will living in a nursing home make it harder for everyone to visit? One benefit of having a one-on-one home health aide is the ability to coordinate every aspect of the elderly person's life, from meals and medicine to home cleaning and mobility. The live-in assistant can make staying in the home a viable possibility, keeping other aspects of life normal and flowing.

At different times in life, people are faced with heavy, even agonizing decisions; however, if you put everything into perspective and ask yourself the right questions, the answer to whether a home aide or nursing home is better for you should be clear. Weigh the benefits of both a nursing home and a home health aide, visualizing the short and long-term outcomes for everyone involved, and hopefully, you will make the right choice for you.

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4 September 2018

utilizing a home health care nurse

Hiring a home care nurse can make things much easier to deal with for so many families. How do you choose the home care service that you use? Is there anything that you can do to make the nurse's job a little easier to accomplish each day. My blog is all about hiring a home care nurse and utilizing all of the services offered by the company. It is my hope that my years of having a home care nurse in my home will help you to find a comfortable and pleasant arrangement that keeps your family member comfortable and healthy for years to come.