Home / Anne Arundel County Patient/Caregiver Teaching

Patient/Caregiver Teaching

If you have an acute or chronic disease, your health care provider may initiate patient and caregiver teaching process to help you and your caregiver (significant other or family member) understand your condition.

Patient/caregiver teaching is an interactive nursing intervention intended to help you gain skills and knowledge related to your disease, so you can manage it more successfully. This type of education also involves a change in your behavior and attitude to improve or maintain your health.

Patient and caregiver teaching provides you and your caregiver the means of participating in your health care management and helps make a difference in your life.

Sixty to seventy deaths in the United States annually occur due to chronic illnesses. Whether you will learn to adequately manage your health problems and maintain quality of life depends on what you learn about your illness and how motivated you are to follow-up with what you’ve learned.

Research shows that patients who are willing to learn and understand the importance of the teaching (including how to manage their medications and to follow-up with their health care providers) are 30 percent less likely to be admitted or readmitted to hospital than patients who did not have this training.

The Goal of Patient/Caregiver Education

The main goal of patient and caregiver teaching is health promotion and prevention of disease. Other aims of patient and caregiver teaching involve the management of disease and appropriate selection of treatment options.

If you have acute or chronic health problems, teaching can help you start a positive change in your behavior and improve understanding of your health care needs, therapy, and the importance of adherence to medical treatment. This should enable you to better manage your condition and more effectively cooperate with your caregiver and health care provider. In short, patient and caregiver teaching can prevent health complications and promote self-care, recovery, and help you stay independent.

Patient/caregiver teaching is intended for patients who would benefit from increased understanding and knowledge of their health condition and therapy. This type of education is also needed where the patient needs to improve skills necessary for safe and efficient health care and to foster a positive attitude and stronger motivation for disease management.

A Teaching Plan

Patient teaching is a process that uses a combination of methods such as counseling, instruction, and behavior modification. It can be planned or informal experience. If you have a specific learning need about health management or promotion of your condition, your health provider may need to develop a teaching plan.

This plan involves:

Assessment of your needs as well as your ability and willingness to learn
Identification of challenges that teaching can improve
Teaching goals
Teaching interventions
Evaluation of the effectiveness of the teaching

However, every interaction with your health provider and a caregiver is a teaching opportunity. Patient and caregiver teaching can result in a permanent change in your motivation, attitude, and behavior, and lead to an improvement in your disease management and quality of life.

Home / Balance/Fall Prevention

Balance/Fall Prevention

The risk of falls and injuries rises as we age. In older adults, the risk of falling is usually related to problems with balance and/or walking problems, the use of multiple medications, dementia, positional low blood pressure, and home hazards.

Your balance may be affected by vision issues, vestibular problems, or changed sensation in your feet. Falls often occur in the bathroom or the dark bedroom at night.

Although it is not possible to completely prevent falls, exercises such as sit-to-stand exercises and balance training that focus on improving balance and building strength can significantly reduce your risk of falling.

Evidence shows that a systematic program of balance/fall prevention helps decrease fall rates of 20% to 50%, including a quick home safety assessment.

Home / Independence & Self-Care Education

Independence & Self-Care Education

Regaining independence and self-care ability after the illness or injury is one of the main goals of rehabilitation. Self-care interventions typically involve five areas of mobility and self-care education: incidental activity, exercise, regaining activities of daily living (ADLs), appropriate supervision, and environmental (home) modifications.

Incidental Activity Training

Incidental activity training involves activities where physical activity occurs as part of regular daily routines, such as dressing, toileting, and mobility. You will be encouraged to dress independently, sit out of bed or get out of bed and move around with supervision and assistance, eat meals out of your bed, and walk to the toilet.

Exercise

You can take part in exercise programs in both individual and group settings and may involve strength, balance, end endurance exercises.

Retrieving ADLs

Your ability to live independently relies on retrieving the skills in activities of daily living. Your independence and self-care education may involve assistance in retraining your ADLs skills, occupational therapy, ensuring aids and additional self-care strategies, removing mobility or self-care obstacles, decluttering your living space, etc.

Supervision & Home Modifications

You will most likely need supervision while transferring from the hospital to your home or long-care facility. The supervision may be reduced as your medical condition stabilizes and you get familiar with the environment and equipment.

Environment modifications involve ensuring obstacles to self-care and mobility are removed, ensuring that tools and aids for mobility and self-care are well-maintained, clearing the environment, remodeling and updating your bathroom and/or kitchen, etc.

Home / Energy Conservation/Daily Living Skills

Energy Conservation/Daily Living Skills

Different kinds of illness, injury, or therapy can be accompanied by feelings of extreme fatigue and energy loss. To help you conserve the energy and more independently perform activities of daily living, our health team may provide valuable training on energy conservation and daily living skills.

Energy conservation helps you adapt the way you carry out your daily activities and adapting the environment in which you complete these activities. Everything we do requires us to use energy. The goal of energy conservation is to improve your quality of life.

Some of the following tips can help you preserve energy and increase independence:

Home modification
Prioritizing
Planning ahead
Positioning (sitting down for your activities whenever possible)
Pacing yourself
Using adaptive equipment
Scheduling household tasks throughout the week

It is normal to feel week and tired after returning home from the hospital. Learning how to conserve energy can help you decrease the number of energy demands on your body and to build strength so you can return to your daily activities and other things you enjoy doing.

Home Care Solutions for Anne Arundel, Baltimore County & Surrounding Areas