Symptoms of ageing can be shocking for children not expecting their parents to lose their abilities. What’s important is learning ways to take care of the elderly people around you for their long, healthy, and happy lives. Not understanding the real needs of elderly people becomes the core of providing insufficient care. In this blog, we will understand the eight needs of elderly people and then learn how to care for elderly people in 10 different ways.
What Are the Needs Of Elderly People?
There are eight essential needs of elderly people. They broadly categorise all areas and types of needs they may have due to increasing age. The list is as follows:
- Health
- Safety
- Emotional & Social Well-being
- Nutrition
- Finance
- Cognitive & Mental Stimulation
- Mobility
- Recreation & Purpose
Addressing the eight needs above is necessary to ensure the long, healthy, and motivated lives of your elderly loved ones. Below, we will discuss how to care for elderly people in 10 different ways.
1. Ensure Proper Nutrition and Hydration
When learning how to care for old people, their nutritional and hydration needs become basic. Elderly people often experience a loss of appetite, several food restrictions due to medical conditions, changing likes and dislikes, and several deficiencies. The combination makes it both difficult and important to fulfill the nutritional needs of the body with the ideal meal. Consulting a doctor and dietician in such cases and then following their advice to the T become important to ensure a balanced diet to the elderly.
2. Encourage Regular Exercise
Physical activity is important for all ages but especially for the elderly, as with age comes growing challenges with mobility, strength, and balance. However, not every exercise is recommended for them. Simple exercises or moderate-intensity exercises like walking or chair exercises, stretching, and yoga under a trainer are ideal for them. However, in some orthopaedic conditions, even these are not allowed. A regular doctor consultation and asking them for ideal exercises for the elderly is important.
3. Provide a Safe and Comfortable Living Environment
Providing safety to the elderly means preventing falls, protecting them from scams and cheats, and being emergency prepared, which is essential when taking care of old people. Anti-slip mats, grab bars in bathrooms, and footlights are some ways to prevent falls. Also, one should ensure a clutter-free space for them to walk and move around with mobility aids. Arranging furniture in a way to provide them support in case of lost balance can also be helpful. Supervision of tech use is also needed to protect them from scams. Furthermore, a proper emergency support system should be in place to ensure immediate help. For example, alarm systems, CCTV cameras, security, regular checks, etc.
4. Support Mental and Emotional Well-Being
Mental health conditions and disorders like anxiety, depression, etc., are common with elderly people. It is important for them to interact with people, engage in activities, find purpose, and receive geriatric counselling regularly. Engaging them in new skill classes, hobby classes, or clubs can be a good way for them to find a purpose, new friends, and a way to spend time.
5. Assist with Personal Care and Hygiene
Ageing people may struggle with personal care and hygiene with time. Change the bathroom setting to hand showers, handrails, raised platforms for buckets, and a waterproof stool or a chair to sit and shower on. Some elderly may require professional assisted living services for daily care tasks such as help with bathing, grooming, dressing, etc. Whether you are getting professional assistance or providing family assistance, it is important to respect their privacy and dignity when taking care of old people.
6. Monitor Medication and Healthcare Needs
Understanding medical and healthcare needs is essential to learning how to take care of an old person. Elderly people often take multiple medicines at different times of the day. Adhering to the prescription may become difficult when the number of medicines increases. Medication management becomes necessary. If not a person, one can also use pill boxes to make it easy for the elderly. However, supervision is required to ensure correct medicine administration. Also, regular health checkups and vital checks are necessary for the elderly, depending on their health condition.
7. Encourage Social Engagement
Providing social engagements for the elderly is extremely necessary for their mental wellness. Organising planned activities, events, or get-togethers for them with people of their age and their loved ones can encourage them to participate and stay involved. Involving them in community activities or hobby clubs can also be helpful to give them a social circle of their liking.
8. Ensure Proper Rest and Sleep
Insomnia is a common issue with elderly people. It is thus important to maintain good sleep hygiene and a timely sleep cycle to ensure proper rest. Lack of sleep can cause an overall health decline. So, one way of taking care of elderly people is to ensure that they maintain their sleep routine by providing them with the ideal environment to relax at night and engage during the day to stop them from engaging in too much day napping.
9. Provide Transportation and Mobility Support
Since mobility is a common problem and restricts most elderly people, providing them access to comfortable and easy transportation is needed. The easy access helps them remain confident and independent and avoid feeling helpless. Family assistance, on-call transport facilities, training to use app cabs, and providing senior transportation programs such as battery cars or travel assistance are some ways to support elderly people.
10. Offer Financial and Legal Assistance
One important consideration often missed when answering how to care for old people is their financial requirements. Elderly people have several concerns related to finance. They require assistance with their pensions, savings, healthcare, taxes, etc. It’s important for them to receive safe and professional assistance with financial and legal processes from trusted sources.
How To Care For Old People With The Help Of Olive Elder Care?
Every type of care needed by elderly people that we discussed above is taken care of at Olive Elder Care. But that’s just the basics. Olive Elder Care residential homes and services are particularly designed for the elderly. With a team of geriatric care experts, we provide an ideal home-like but better environment for senior citizens. When you bring in your ageing loved ones to Olive Elder Care, you gift them the experience of holistic eldercare.
Visit Olive Elder Care and learn how to take care of elderly people from experts.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you take care of the elderly?
Taking care of elderly people involves providing them an environment where they can be happy, engaged, motivated, feel safe, receive medical care and assistance with whatever they need.
How do you care for older parents?
Older parents require a lot of attention on their mental and physical health and assistance with regular tasks, engagement, etc.
How to give personal care to the elderly?
One can hire professional assisted living services at home or help the elderly themselves with activities such as grooming, dressing, cleaning, etc.
What are the 8 needs of the elderly?
The eight needs of elderly people include Health, Safety, Emotional & Social Well-being, Nutrition, Finance, Cognitive & Mental Stimulation, Mobility, and finally, Recreation & Purpose.
