Nearly 5 million Americans have heart failure, and 1.3 million of those people end up being readmitted to the hospital – in fact heart failure has the highest readmission rate of all chronic diseases. Many of these costly and stressful return trips to the hospital can be preventable by learning how to manage the condition and taking a few simple steps to stay healthy. Additionally, having a support team of loved ones who are informed about the condition and involved in the caregiving plays a huge role in avoiding rehospitalizations.
We recently added heart failure education material to CareTogether’s condition-specific resources. From “Heart Failure Definition and Warning Signs” to a weight calendar, these resources will help you learn about the condition and help your loved one understand their condition so they can improve their quality of life, stay healthy, and avoid unexpected trips to the hospital.
These downloadable files are available CareTogether users who select “Heart Failure” as a condition. The files appear on the right column of the Resources Tab. Here’s a list of the new heart failure education materials:
Heart Failure Definition and Warning Signs:
Answers to What is it? What causes it? What are the symptoms? What are the warning signs of a flare-up? It also lists signs to monitor of a worsening condition.
About Heart Failure Medication
Explains what your medicines do, what kinds of medicines are used for heart failure, and more.
Heart Failure Weight Calendar
One of the best ways to improve recovery from heart failure is to monitor weight. It is very important for heart failure patients to weigh themselves at the same time every day and record their weight. This calendar lets you write in the date, time, and notes (“Ate Chinese food last night”). It’s a great tool to bring to doctor appointments.
Heart Failure Wellness and Nutrition
Overview of ways to stay healthy, benefits of exercise, how to plan your exercise, signs of over-exertion. This document also includes tips on eating low-salt food and a list of foods to consider and avoid. The last page lists important ways to take care of yourself.
Emotions and Your Heart
Heart failure can bring about many different feelings. Sadness, fear, and anger are natural and common responses. This resource helps you understand and cope with these feelings.
Heart Failure Web Resources
Lists more than a dozen websites that offer even more great information about heart failure.
To sign up for a completely free and secure CareTogether page for your loved one and family, visit www.caretogether.com to get started!
As we recognize National Nurses Week and reflect on all of the ways nurses impact our lives for the better, we wanted to take a moment to recognize just a few of the many nurses at BrightStar Care who have dedicated themselves to the mission of making more possible for the clients and families in their care. When asked how they are making more possible, here's what they had to say:
- Ann Markey of Dayton, OH: "Understanding that every client is an individual with various needs and going above and beyond to assure all of their needs are met. I believe and live by the fact that we do more simply because it is the right thing to do."
- Kristy Stroupe Mcnair of Gastonia, NC: "Allowing Clients to take an active role in their care. This is their life, not mine; we are merely a “buddy” who wants to assist them in maintaining their independence safely and ensuring the highest quality of life possible. We are serving them as well as their families. Albert Einstein said it best when he said, 'Only a life lived for others, is a life worth living.'"
- Emily Nyberg of Minneapolis, MN: "Providing individualized care with compassion and a smile. It is important for me to consider the needs of clients and their families to promote quality of life. By providing quality care, clients and their families are able to spend more quality time together."
- Carmen Baker of Thousand Oaks, CA: "Valuing them [clients] as individuals, respecting their dignity and celebrating the lives they have lived and entrusted to our care. I take the time to inquire about their needs and what is important to them. My goal is that our company can impact their lives in a positive way."
- Deborah Hustace of Evansville, IN: "Ensuring that our clients are treated like family and valued for all of their life experiences. I listen, learn, and honor, what is important to each of them and treasure the opportunity to be a part of their lives."
Be sure to stay tuned to hear more from some of BrightStar's compassionate nurses. Happy National Nurses Week!
Did you know that the nursing profession has been supported and promoted by the American Nurses Association (ANA) since 1896? That's 116 years! And did you know that National Nurses Week (deliberately) occurs around Florence Nightingale's May 12 birthday? Also, in 2011, Americans again voted nurses the most trusted profession in America for the 12th time in 13 years in the annual Gallup poll that ranks professions for their honesty and ethical standards. Nurses' honesty and ethics were rated "very high" or "high" by 84 percent of poll respondents.
But don't be too surprised - nurses are among the most hard-working, compassionate people around. And that's why, according to the ANA, in 1954, National Nurse Week was first observed (in October, though - it was later moved to May 20 years later in 1974). During National Nurses Week 2012, ANA is calling attention to registered nurses (RNs) and their contributions to the health care system, both in the role they play as expert clinicians in diverse care settings and as leaders who can dramatically influence the quality of care and overall performance of the system into the future. Here is an interesting infographic that captures the history of nursing but also touches on some key roles that nurses can play in our lives and the lives of those we care for most:
At BrightStar Care, our people are our greatest asset and the RNs on our teams nationwide are no exception. We are so thankful for the hard work and dedication of our nurses, and all of our caregivers, both during National Nurses Week and every week. Happy National Nurses Week!
Nothing can truly prepare someone for the loss of a loved one. Loss can be especially hard on a caregiver, who invested so much time and energy into caring for that loved one. Caregivers can suffer a great amount of grief and even slip into depression despite having to possibly take care of a loved one’s estate or help with his or her family. Care for the caregiver is important all along their journey of caring for a loved one but especially once the loved one has passed.
Some caregivers at first feel numb and disoriented, then yearn for the person who died. Others feel anxious and have trouble sleeping, possibly dwelling on old disagreements and wishing they could have said more before the passing. Caregivers may have sudden crying outbursts when remembering their loved one. A loved one’s death can even compound problems for a caregiver who experienced caregiver burnout, which is the progression of stresses, physical, emotional, financial, psychological and social, to the point where he or she feels “burned out.”
Dealing with grief is essential in order to come to terms with the loss of a loved one and move forward. While each caregiver deals with loss in his or her own way, there is help on the horizon. CareAnswers.com recently featured a 2-part series that examined 12 insights into grieving from Therese A. Rando, Ph.D. and provided the following suggestions:
Your grief is as personal and unique as your fingerprint; no one else will have the same bereavement experience as you and there is not one “correct” way to respond to loss. Suggestion: Do not let anyone tell you how you need to grieve or mourn.
You are dealing with more than one loss when your loved one dies. Suggestion: Work to revise your perspective because elements of it are no longer valid or have been shattered because of your loved one’s death.
The depth and breadth of your acute grief reactions to the loss of your loved ones should not be underestimated. Suggestion: Remembering that this is a process and not a state you will stay stuck in, give yourself permission to express your reactions in ways that work for you.
Grief does not solely affect your emotions and does not mean that you will only be sad. Suggestion: Expect that you will be affected in all, or many, areas of your life.
Your acute grief entails your having to gradually learn the reality of your loved one’s loss, and to appreciate that you cannot grasp that fact or its implications without sufficient time and experiences to “teach” you. Suggestion: Expect that it will take you many months or even years before you can truly and permanently grasp that your loved one is gone.
Grief is not the same as mourning, and you need to do more to cope with your loved one’s death than just express your feelings. Suggestion: Express your grief reactions, but recognize there is more work to do.
The circumstances of your loved one’s death will have a profound influence on you. Suggestion: If your loved one died from an illness, develop an accurate appreciation of how illness can affect those left behind, and look for ways to rejoin the world if you had spent much of your time caretaking.
Your grief reactions will not proceed in a fixed sequence, will not necessarily decline consistently over time or be over in a year and will not fail to come up again once they subside. Suggestion: Give yourself permission to have your reactions unfold without automatically thinking you are backtracking if you feel worse after feeling better.
It is a myth that healthy mourning means totally “letting go” of your lost loved one. Suggestion: Discover ways that are healthy and personally meaningful to you in which you can maintain appropriate connections with your loved one, recognizing that others may think this is unhealthy.
Others will not necessarily understand what you are going through or know how to reach out and support you. Suggestion: Ask for what you need from others.
Because children do not respond exactly like adults does not mean they don’t need to be given information about the death, or to be included in the family’s activities and discussions around it. Suggestion: Operate with the knowledge that children do grieve and mourn, and that you need to find the most effective ways to support them.
Many mourners have the wrong notion about what “recovery” means. Suggestion: Look for specific ways in which you can transcend this event. In other words, work to make something good happen out of it.
For more caregiver resources and helpful content, visit www.careanswers.com.
End of life can be and is often difficult to think about, let alone plan for. But when we do think about the end of our lives, many have preferences about how things will be handled but few communicate this.
According to Engage With Grace, a non-profit geared toward making one of life’s most difficult discussions easier by boiling it down to five talking points on a single, easily e-mailed and linked slide, eight out of ten people say it is “very” or “somewhat” important to write down EOL wishes, but only 36% actually have written instructions. They also indicate that 73% of Americans would prefer to die at home, but anywhere between 20-50% of Americans die in hospital settings.
Click here to access the slide to share with family members and loved ones as well as a helpful presentation on the topic.
Every 70 seconds, someone develops Alzheimer’s and in 2006, there were 26.6 millions sufferers worldwide. The disease is predicted to affect 1 in 85 people by 2050. That’s why CareAnswers is taking a closer look in its latest blog series to not only identify key symptom and the stages of Alzheimer’s but also to identify what family caregivers and loved ones can do for someone who is living with this disease.
So what is Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)? Imagine losing your memory so severely you forget your name and the names of those you love. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, which is serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unaffected person, beyond what may be expected from normal aging. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s, which worsens as it progresses and eventually leads to death. Most often, AD is diagnosed in people over the age of 65, but early-onset Alzheimer’s can occur much earlier.
Early symptoms of the disease are often mistaken as a result of “getting old” or stress. However, the most common symptom in the early stages is remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include confusion, irritability and aggression, mood swings, language troubles and long-term memory loss. Because AD is incurable and worsens with time, those affected must rely on caregivers for assistance. That role is usually taken by the spouse or close relative and, because AD is known for placing social, psychological, physical and economic stress on the caregiver, those close to the patient can also feel the impacts of the disease as well.
So how can you tell if a loved one might have Alzheimer’s? Click here for the 10 warning signs.
Every day, more American families take on the responsibilities of caring for a loved one in need of physical, social, emotional, or financial assistance. Despite the craziness of life, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters make the time to prepare meals, provide transportation, do laundry, run errands, and more.
In a March 26 article in the USA Today, Christine Dugas provides some tips on how to prepare for becoming a family caregiver. We thought it’d be fun to go through her words of wisdom and match them with CareTogether features to demonstrate how valuable CareTogether can be for family caregivers.
Caregiver Situation:
“Last July, Julie Baldocchi’s mother had a massive stroke and was paralyzed. Baldocchi suddenly had to become a family caregiver, something that she wasn’t prepared for.”
CareTogether Solution:
CareTogether offers condition-specific resources for family members to learn more about their loved one’s conditions. CareTogether teams can select the specific conditions their loved one has to read blog posts and education material in CareTogether Resources. In Julie Baldocchi’s case, she could select “Cardiovascular/Stroke” to get more information on her mother’s condition.
It’s not always easy to know how to help. CareTogether task lists lets you create your own lists or choose from template lists. After you create a list of tasks, you can assign individual tasks to members of the care team. Julie Baldocchi’s case, she could select the Family Caregiver Questionnaire” to learn a few things she and the members of the care team should monitor with her mother. They can cross things off the list as they accomplish them, add to the list, or create new lists. Other templates include “Home Safety Checklist,” “Creating an Emergency Contact List,” and “Legal Checklist.”
Caregiver Situation:
“…she eventually hired a live-in caregiver.”
CareTogether Solution:
We mentioned them above, but one of the CareTogether Task List templates is “Interviewing a New Caregiver Checklist.” Armed with this, Julie and her family would feel confident that they hired the right person to assist their mother. Questions include:
- Find out their qualification and what, if any, certifications they have.
- Find out about the kinds of activities they would do with her mother
- Do they have any marks against their driving record?
Caregiver Situation:
“And when there are many siblings, the family decisions can become a three-ring circus”
CareTogether Solution:
CareTogether private messages and Journal entries allow families to work through and communicate difficult situations without muddying up a work or personal email inbox, volleying back and forth through Facebook, or trying to play phone tag. CareTogether’s message feature and Journal help families organize their discussions, comment on them, and keep a record of what was discussed.
Caregiver Situation:
“Family caregivers take over many responsibilities. One might manage a parent’s finances, while another sibling will take the parent to doctors’ appointments and shopping.”
CareTogether Solution:
With CareTogether’s calendar feature, care team members can schedule events like doctor appointments and shopping trips, assign the appointment to a team member, and even export that appointment to Google or Outlook Calendar. Such a valuable tool just in case the person who usually takes grandma to the grocery store can’t, she can schedule and assign the next trip to a care team member, and the care team member receives an email with the date, time, and instructions for the trip! Maintaining a loved one’s schedule in CareTogether helps team members stay up to date and involved in the caregiving, so they know to call after an important doctor’s appointment, for example.
Caregiver Situation:
“Caregivers need to watch their own health.”
CareTogether Solution:
The best way for caregivers to avoid burn out is to involve family and friends in the care. CareTogether is designed for family caregivers to work as a team when providing care for a loved one in need. Even long-distance family members can stay up to date on the caregiving schedule, they can share personal stories or reflections in the journal, they can learn more about their loved one’s condition by reading the resources, and more.
Growing old is an honor that not bestowed upon everybody and there are so many wonderful aspects of aging, from having a lifetime of wisdom to share to watching generations of your family grow and more. But there can also be many challenges faced in growing older and the potential for impaired vision, arthritis, falls in the home and elsewhere, cognitive decline.
Being that April is Occupational Therapy Month, we wanted to shed some light on how occupational therapists are helping people, from children to the elderly, to participate in the things they want and need to do through the therapeutic use of everyday activities (occupations). This simple mission is near and dear to our hearts here at BrightStar, so we wanted to share some helpful considerations for those who would like to safely age in place from The American Occupational Therapy Association to guide you and your loved ones to get the most out of life, even in old age. If you want to...
Be safe and independent in your home
Think honestly about those things you are having trouble with and ask for assistance when possible. You may be able to do a "swap" with neighbors (i.e. offer to sign for packages if they work during the day in exchange for help changing light bulbs in hard-to-reach places). Hire professionals for regular cleaning and lawn care, arrange for Meals on Wheels, etc.
Get to the grocery store, doctor's appointments and social events
If you're concerned about your driving skills, consider asking a friend or neighbor to provide a ride whenever possible; offering gas money or a service in return can make this easier. If you haven't taken public transportation in the past, you may be surprised at the number of options available. Many communities offer a free bus or van to shopping centers or even medical appointments. If you are still driving, attending a CarFit event in your community to be sure your vehicle's adjustments are best for you (www.car-fit.org). Avoid driving during rush hour, at night, on busy roads, or in inclement weather.
Click here to download a comprehensive guide to review even more tips for safely aging in place as well as information on how occupational therapy can help.
CareAnswers.com guest blogger Mike Ramczyk recently published an entry about a walk he took with his beagle, Olive. "Everything was business as usual," he described. Controlled by her nose, Olive the beagle sniffed her way down the block until they approached some neighbors sitting on their front lawn, a middle-aged man and his elderly mother. Olive catapulted toward the pair and, for whatever reason, went immediately to the elderly woman instead of the man.
Despite a sprint up to her lap, Olive was otherwise gentle in her approach and was soon standing up with her front paws resting on the woman's lap. Olive respectfully showed the woman plenty of love, offering her gentle touch and licking at her face. Was there a reason why Olive went to the woman and not her son? As it turned out, the woman's dog, a black Labrador, recently died from cancer. While conspiracy theorists or those who believe in superstition might be inclined to attribute it to a dog's “sixth sense,” this might not be too far from the truth and Olive's propensity to approach the elderly may have not been a mistake at all.
Experts and animal psychics, he writes, believe dogs can feel the energy of humans around them, and this may have tipped off Olive to the elderly woman. Forty-three percent of pet owners say dogs have warned them about bad news, according to a 2010 Associated Press-Petside.com poll. But the benefits of pets are not limited to their tendencies to pick up on nonverbals and emotion. Click here to read the rest of the entry and learn about some health benefits that pets have to offer.
It's a milestone in many peoples' young lives and something most of us do everyday: walking. It's a generally low-impact activity that many of us simply do without even thinking. So what if we told you doing this for just 30 minutes, 5 times per week could have some pretty impactful health benefits? Let's face it, for many of us, developing and keeping up with an excercise routine can seem like a daunting task, but encouraging yourself and even your loved ones (especially aging loved ones) to keep moving is so important, especially as we get older. Here is an insightfult infographic that highlights some of the benefits of "getting back to the basics" with walking:
