What do in-home care services include

When you think about in-home care services, what comes to your mind? In most cases, many people only think about nursing and medical care when this question is posed to them. In reality, however, the scope of in-home care services is quite wide. Apart from medical care, this field also includes therapy, companionship, health-care assistants, nutritionists and many more. In this article, we will give you a brief idea about the different services that in-home care is usually made up of:

1. Companionship

This is one of the most common in-home care services that you can choose if your loved one is feeling lonely and depressed. Most of the times, you are traveling due to work, and there is nobody else to take care of the seniors in your family. They are healthy and have no difficulties in going about their routine life, but they miss companionship. This department of service includes the following:

• Helping the seniors with their regular meals and medicines
• Giving them company when they go out for walks
• Providing help in their grooming
• Helping with all household tasks such as cleaning, cooking and more
• 24/7 assistance to provide a safe and independent living environment to the elderly

2. Nursing services

When a senior of your family is disabled or injured severely, you will require the private nursing service. This way, you don’t have to take them to the hospitals and ensure that they recover quickly right in their homes.  This department of service includes the following:

• Providing continuous assistance for patients with chronic illness
• Specialized medical assistance such as tube-feeding, ventilator care, treating respiratory ailments, providing injections and medicines at frequent intervals, helping patients on wheelchairs, catheter care and so on
• 24/7 observation of the current medical condition and providing regular updates to the doctors so that the condition doesn’t worsen and there is no onset of any other new ailment

3. Assistance on health

When the seniors are recovering from an injury or ailment, you can hire in-home health services for them. This is the department that focuses mostly on the recovery period of the patient. This department of service includes the following:

• Helping patients with check-ups and follow-up visits to the doctors, whenever it is due
• Providing physical therapy in a structured schedule so that the seniors can gain back the movement in their muscles, joints and other pain areas
• Providing occupational therapy, which trains the seniors emotionally and socially; this will help them to take care of their day-to-day needs such as eating, bathing, and grooming without any difficulties
• Providing speech therapy to seniors who have lost their power of speech completely or partially so that their communication skills improve; this therapy works well if seniors have lost their speech naturally or from an accident
• Providing medical social services, which includes arranging for counseling sessions for seniors to help them get back to their original self

These are only some of the basic services offered by in-home care agencies. You can also approach them for specialized services such as transportation, laboratory and X-ray services, medical equipment request and other house-keeping services.