Home Care | Safe Medication Administration

Home care providers are meeting the needs of more and more seniors who desire to stay in their own homes for as long as possible. While staying at home has proven benefits on quality of life, comfort, happiness, and even health, its important to plan appropriately for needs and safety of the senior citizen living alone. One topic at the top of the list for home care providers is safe medication administration.

Common Medical Issues

As we age, it’s not unusual to develop new aches, pains, indications, diseases, and disorders that require medication to treat. Some of the most common age-related problems treated with medication include glaucoma, water retention, high blood pressure, irregular heart rhythms, high cholesterol, gastroesophageal reflux disease, enlarged prostate, tremors, and cognitive decline. In addition, many doctors prescribe multiple different vitamins and supplements to assist with a variety of different indications and boost the body’s ability to fight infection.

Keeping Track of Medications

While each medication serves an important purpose, keeping complex medication schedules with multiple drugs, doses, dosing times, routes, and instructions straight can be challenging even for the most spry. With the added challenges that come with age – such as cognitive decline, forgetfulness, and loss of motor function – medication administration becomes much more complex.

Strive for safe medication administration at home by:

• setting up medications in advance according to doctor’s orders
• carefully reviewing contraindications for each medication and communicating thorough instructions to your loved one
• arranging for a family member to stop by and assist with medication administration if possible
• arranging for home care services to ensure medications are set up and administered accurately.

One medication error can cause a serious adverse reaction including heart attack, stroke, or death. If you suspect that your loved one may not be taking his or her medications or may not be taking them exactly as prescribed, be proactive in putting a better solution in place.

To learn more about medication administration in home care, call us at Santé today. We are here because we care about you and your loved one.