Best Gift for Someone in the Hospital
What is THE best present for someone in the hospital?
Your presence!
Why are YOU such a gift?
Little known fact: 20 – 30% of all patients end up back in the hospital within a month. Often, it’s because they can’t drive to get prescriptions filled or make it to follow-up doctor appointments. Sometimes patients ignore signs of health problems after a hospital stay, hoping they’ll just “go away” or they don’t want to be a “bother”.
Your time and help as your loved one’s Care Partner can be priceless! Why don’t you organize friends and family to help with these critical tasks to prevent round trip hospital stay?
Be present during discharge to ask questions and take notes
Make sure your loved one gets to follow-up doctor visits after discharge
Have prescriptions filled
Make sure that you (or another Care Partner to your loved one) is comfortable with every detail of the medication regimen, which may be completely different than the one they followed before the hospital stay. (It’s OK to keep asking questions and ask for more time during discharge to “get it right.”)
Help put a safe system in place for taking medicines at home. If stumped for ideas, ask for help in the hospital or the pharmacist where prescriptions are filled. (Or just call me.)
Follow up on any tests still pending at discharge – make sure all test results get to the right doctors and that they go over them with your loved one.
Check in with loved one every day for at least a month after leaving the hospital to watch for signs of problems.
This may feel like a long list, but imagine what it feels like to be sick and have to manage these things while trying to recover. Even worse, imagine your loved one back in a hospital bed with a blood clot, medication overdose, or infection – all common and preventable causes of most round trips.
To learn more about common, early warning signs of problems after discharge, and how to safeguard your loved one’s hospital care, check out the free checklists at TheCarePartnerProject.org.
And know, too, that I am just a phone call away. Round trips are for fun, not for hospital care – and we know how to get that right.