The content of daily care education for the elderly includes

The core of daily care education for the elderly can be summarized as five modules: basic physiological care, safety risk prevention and control, long-term management of chronic diseases, psychological and emotional counseling, and social function maintenance. All contents are aimed at maintaining the quality of life of the elderly and reducing the risk of disability and dementia. In actual implementation, they will be flexibly adjusted based on the individual elderly person's ADL (Activities of Daily Living) score, basic medical history, and family care conditions. There is no absolutely unified standardized template.

Don’t underestimate safety risk prevention and control. I have worked in a community nursing home for 7 years, and I have seen too many examples of elderly people who were originally able to take care of themselves completely, but fell directly and became semi-incapacitated after just one fall. Aunt Zhang, who I just met last month, usually walks around the vegetable market easily carrying a vegetable basket. Her family members always thought, "My mother is in good health and she doesn't need to use those anti-slip things." However, she stepped on a piece of soap that fell on the floor while taking a bath at night and broke her femoral neck. After lying down for three months, she had to use a walker to walk. There are actually two different ideas in the industry regarding anti-fall education: one group advocates "maximizing risk avoidance", which means clearing the circulation lines in the home as much as possible, covering the bathroom with anti-slip mats, and advising the elderly to go out less and reduce collisions. ； Another school of thought brought by care supervisors from Taiwan is called "appropriate preservation of risk". It says that if you keep the elderly at home to prevent falls and prevent them from going out for activities, their muscles will degenerate faster and their balance will become worse and worse, which will increase the risk of long-term falls. It is better to provide the elderly with a pair of well-fitting non-slip shoes, teach him to count to three when sitting up and then stand up, and allow him to go out for square dancing and walking when accompanied, which can maintain his physical condition. To be honest, I prefer the latter. After all, preventing falls is not the purpose, but letting the elderly live a good life.

When many family members come to us for educational materials at the beginning, they always ask "what supplements to take" first, but they don't pay attention to the details of basic physiological care. I previously visited 86-year-old Grandpa Li for a care assessment. His family members said that the old man always complained of poor appetite and had low-grade fevers from time to time. He went to several hospitals to check but could not find any problems. Later, I opened his upper lip and saw that the removable dentures he wore had not been removed and cleaned for more than half a year. His gums were red, swollen and suppurating. The inflammation was running down his esophagus, and of course his stomach was not comfortable. There are also elderly people who have been bedridden for a long time. Their family members always think, "I can just turn him over on time." In fact, it is not just that. In summer, he sweats a lot. Even a little bit of rice or sweat stains on his waist may cause redness and rash if he is bored for two hours. If it develops into a stage 3 pressure ulcer, it will take several months to change the dressing. These details are not unimportant, but they are too detailed. Many standardized missionary materials will not be so specific.

When it comes to chronic disease management, I have met many family members who go to extremes. There was an 82-year-old man with high blood pressure, and his son was particularly concerned about it. He set three alarm clocks to tell him to take medicine on time. He even used a kitchen scale to weigh the salt of the vegetables he ate every day. As a result, the old man felt that he was completely treated as a patient and had no freedom at all. He secretly threw the medicine into a flower pot and even kept his blood pressure up to 180 without telling him. Later, we adjusted the plan for him. We didn’t need an alarm clock and put the medicine next to the purple clay jar where he made tea every day. When he got up in the morning, he took the tea and drank it without feeling like he was being controlled. The salt didn’t need to be measured strictly by the gram. As long as he put less soy sauce and ate less pickles, his blood pressure was very stable now. There is also controversy in this area of ​​evangelism: one group says that we must strictly follow the doctor's instructions, and the dosage and time of taking the medicine are almost unacceptable. ； The other group says that for the elderly, emotional stability is more important than meeting strict targets. If he just takes a bite of mung bean cake and is not allowed to eat it at all, and he secretly eats a whole piece, his blood sugar will fluctuate even more. It is better to give him a quarter at a time and eat it between meals. This will satisfy his appetite and the indicator will not fluctuate too much.

Many people tend to ignore the education on psychological and social functions. They always think that "the elderly can just eat well and be clothed, so why bother thinking so much about it?" There used to be a Grandma Wang in our community. She was a math teacher in a key middle school before she retired. Her son was afraid that she would be tired, so he hired a nanny and wouldn't let her do any work. As a result, she always sighed at home, saying that she was useless and couldn't even eat. Later, we taught her son, and brought her grandson’s oral arithmetic homework back to grandma to check after get off work every day. When cooking, we asked grandma to help pick vegetables and peel garlic. Within half a month, Grandma Wang carried a cloth bag and went to the park to practice Tai Chi. There are now two voices regarding psychological care for the elderly: one says that the elderly should be taken care of in every possible way and that they should not be allowed to touch any work. ； Another way is to leave some room for the elderly to be "needed". Even if the vegetables he picks have yellow leaves and the garlic he peels is not clean, it is better than making him feel like a burden. I have been caring for so many years, and I really feel that the latter is more important. The emotional problems of many elderly people are not at all a lack of food and clothing, but a lack of sense of their own value.

To be honest, missionary content is never a rigid rule printed on paper. Last time, a family member of a centenarian came to me and said that the old man had been smoking for more than 80 years and now took two puffs every day. Should I force him to quit? I said at the time that I was a hundred years old, and as long as I did not smoke in a confined space and took two puffs at a time, there was no need to force myself to quit smoking, which would only make the old man feel bad. After all, the core of our daily care is never to let the elderly live a "template that meets all health standards", but to enable them to live the life they want to live with comfort and dignity.