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Preparing for Emergencies in Your Distance Elderly Care Plan

Elderly Care in Northampton PA

The thought of an aging adult experiencing a personal emergency is upsetting and frightening for any family caregiver. If you are living at a distance from your parents, however, this thought can be even more overwhelming. You love your parents and you want to feel confident that they are safe, secure, healthy, and comfortable at all times, which means you need to make sure that your distance elderly care plan includes contingency plans for the times when the unexpected happens and you are not around to offer immediate assistance.

Use these tips to help you prepare for personal emergencies in your elderly care plan:

• Have a care provider. One of the simplest, most effective, and most beneficial ways to help protect your elderly loved ones from serious consequences resulting from personal emergencies is to hire a care provider. An elderly health care services provider is like an extension of you, providing direct care and assistance when you are not able to be with your parents due to living at a distance. She is ideal for providing the type of support and care that can help your loved ones avoid emergencies such as falls, lockouts, fires, and injuries.

• Utilize technology. The elderly care community has benefited immeasurably from new technology that allows seniors to stay in closer contact with caregivers and care providers, and even provides a “watchful eye” when they are on their own. Look into getting a Personal Emergency Response System, or PERS, for your seniors. This wearable device allows your parents to call for help if they happen to fall or get locked out of their house, and some come with built-in fall detection to ensure the proper response team is notified if your elderly loved ones experience a fall in their home.

• Set up a schedule. If your parent fell in the home, experienced a life-threatening medical emergency such as a heart attack or a stroke, got locked out of the house, or was injured in the yard, how long would it take for somebody to find him? Set up a schedule of people checking in on your parents, or a specific time when you call them or they call you. If the call is missed, get in touch with a member of your care network to go check in on them. This can prevent devastating consequences.

• Have backups. While you will likely come to rely on and trust your parents’ elderly health care services provider, it is important to remember that she is a person, too, and that she may encounter her own personal emergencies such as an illness, a sick child, an injury, or another problem. Make sure that you have backups in the form of other approved care providers from the same agency, or you know how to set up a respite care provider so that your parents do not miss out on the care that they need while you work to replace or fill in for their usual provider.

If you are considering hiring elderly care services in Northampton, PA, contact the caring staff at Extended Family Care of Allentown. Call today at (610)200-6097.

Stephen Sternbach

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