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Should elderly patients be cared for by family members or by health care professionals? Here of late, I have had the occasion to be able to relate to the care of an elderly patient and I would have to say, "When elderly patients cannot do anything for themselves and are being fed through their veins and they are hooked up to different types of medical equipment to live, I believe they need to be in a health care professional setting because it is almost impossible for two or three adult family members to take care of the patient in the proper manner and then they do not have a doctor immediately available." When a patient is in a serious condition, they definitely need health care professionals to be there for vital signs, etc.

If a patient is able to walk around by themselves, feed themselves, go to the bathroom alone, etc., then I believe family members are capable of taking care of them but it's almost impossible to care for a person who is immobile and suffering from memory loss. Yes, it's hard if the patient is a parent, we do everything we can to take care of them but if they are in a immobile state, they need health care professionals to take care or assist a family. Yes, it's difficult to admit that we cannot keep our parents at home and take care of them but we could be doing the parent a disservice by trying to keep them at home. People who are suffering from memory loss or any other serious illness, it's almost impossible to get them to take their medications and food. They will fight to the bitter end if they don't want to do something.

Health care professionals can crush their medications up and feed it to them through feeding tubes, etc., and if a patient is "not" eating they can be fed by means of a tube through a patient's nose. Patients who need these sort of things need to be in a health care setting regardless of how we don't want to admit it. I've said many times, "I don't want my Mother or Dad in a nursing home but when I see the patients needing all this medical help...I know that I'm not a professional and I do not have the capabilities of taking care of them.

Children who have elderly parents and are finding it hard to take care of their elderly parent, should not feel guilty if they cannot handle taking care of their parent. Their parent might be suffering because you cannot give them the help they need and you never want to be put on a guilt trip if your care does not meet up to standards. If you do not want to leave your elderly parent alone in a nursing home, the family can work out a schedule to set with their parent at the nursing home. By doing this, the parent would be getting the proper care they need and the family member would not have any "guilt" feelings.

Learn more about this author, Barbara Kasey Smith.
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