Your dad started having seizures. His doctors haven’t found anything yet, but they do recommend that you set up skilled nursing care after his last seizure. He fell in the bathroom and suffered a head injury and a broken collarbone. What are the benefits of skilled nursing care?
Health Assessments
Your dad’s nurses can check on his general health each day. Blood pressure readings, assessments of his cognitive skills, and other important checks like pulse, blood sugar levels, and blood oxygen levels.
If anything seems unusual, your dad’s nurses can alert his doctors and discuss the next steps in his care plan. This often prevents him from having to return to a hospital where he worries about medical bills and experiences extra stress.
Medication Administration
Whatever medications your dad is taking, he needs to take them regularly. Nurses can make sure he takes them. If any medications require an injection or IV line, his nurses can do that. He won’t have to go to a clinic for any blood draws, injections, or IVs.
He may be on pain medications that must be carefully managed. His nurse will help him with the proper dosages and alert his doctors if his pain levels are not being properly managed with the medications he’s using. A change of medicines may be necessary, and skilled nursing care helps take care of this without a return visit to the hospital.
Wound and Incision Care
When your dad fell and broke his collarbone, he had to have surgery. He has incisions that need to be cleaned and dressed. It’s not a task you feel comfortable doing, and you struggle to tell if his incisions are healing normally or showing signs of inflammation that’s leading to infection.
If his medical team finds the cause of the seizure and he requires brain surgery, skilled nurses can monitor his recovery, watch that his incision heals properly, and alert his doctor if anything seems wrong. It gives him and you peace of mind that he has trained medical professionals with him when he’s recovering at home.
In-Home Physical and Occupational Therapy
Your dad may need physical or occupational therapy as he regains strength and range of motion in his arm and shoulder. If he can’t get out of his home and drive to a therapist’s office, he can have skilled nursing care services that bring the therapists to him.
After a seizure, he cannot drive. He may not be able to drive again, so in-home physical and occupational therapy services can be a game-changer. Sometimes a seizure can occur before or after a stroke, due to changes in blood flow in the brain’s blood vessels. Brain tumors may lead to seizures. It may not be possible to determine precisely what caused it.
