More Questions than Answers for Inpatient Rehabilitation
Inpatient rehabilitation has its place. A hospital, whose healthcare professionals have just performed hip surgery for example, often has an in-house program that gets a patient up and to inpatient rehabilitation so that he or she can become acclimated to movement post-surgery. Stand-alone rehabilitation facilities also exist and often accomplish the same goals.
Yet consider the plight of the mature adult who has been removed from her comfortable home and surroundings and plopped into a rehabilitation facility, where she knows no one. She’s staring at bare walls, meeting unfamiliar people for the first time. And making demands that make her confused and frustrated. Plus, your mom, or whoever had transported her, may have forgotten what she needed or wanted at home: the book she’d been reading, her latest crochet project, or her favorite blanket. Her goal of getting better has already taken several huge hits.
The healthcare professional who authored the article “5 Problems that Arise during Inpatient Rehabilitation,” maintains that other key issues that can exist for your loved one can throw up roadblocks. Here are three others besides “forgetting something,” and the abrupt change to a new temporary home.
- External conflicts: Dealing with other patients or demanding staff.
- Internal conflicts: Mental or emotional issues like the loss of home connection, depression, dementia, and/or delirium.
- Boredom: Not having what your mom needs to pass the time during this turbulent time.
Sometimes, the simplest solution is the most sensible: Home Care.
Staying at home during this time eliminates the unfamiliarity of multiple caregivers (your loved one may choose her caregiver) and she knows where the book she’s reading is, knows where her creative project is (right where her easy chair and blanket are). There are no other patients or clients and only one caregiver who she needs to work through her physical therapy or other issues with.
Moreover, when a senior adult, especially when dealing with unpredictable drug interactions, can be depressed and suffer from delirium (which is often misdiagnosed as dementia). These issues happen with regularity at inpatient rehabilitation facilities.
Recovering in your home, as opposed to an inpatient rehabilitation facility, removes unnecessary barriers to recovery. And your mom will be much happier when she’s visited by her family, friends, and neighbors – in her very own HOME, SWEET HOME.
Call 800.650.5289 to learn more about our Home Care services.