Best Digital Tools for the In Home Caregiver
As an in home caregiver, you have access to many digital tools and apps to help support your senior loved one in Woodbridge, CT
Being an in home caregiver for an aging loved one is all but easy. With so many daily tasks and obligations, many caregivers end up with their own set of health problems, both physical and emotional.
Luckily, there are some solutions that can help primary caregivers manage their responsibilities with ease. We present some of the best digital tools for family care providers:
Communication & Keeping in Touch
As an in home caregiver, you need to speak to a lot of people on a regular basis, including family and friends, medical professionals, and service providers. Most of your communication will likely be conducted with text messages, emails, phone calls or video calls (using Skype, FaceTime or Zoom), but even with all these platforms, communication can take up a lot of your time. There is a time-saving solution for this problem - and it comes in the form of CaringBridge, a platform where you can create a website about your loved one, post pictures and updates about their situation and condition, and share the link to the site family and friends.
Managing Medications
A whopping 87 percent of seniors take at least one prescription medication daily and 26 percent of older adults use 5+ medication per day, according to Jama Internal Medicine. As an in home caregiver, it is very important that you know how to properly manage your loved one's medication. You can do this with the help of digital tools like Reminder Rosie, which is a personalized system for various reminders, including medication, appointments, and more, MedCoach, which sends medication reminders to your phone and connects you to your local pharmacy, PillPack, which is a service that sorts and packs medications and sends them properly labeled to your address, and The Sagely SMART Weekly Pill Dispenser, which is a pill organizer for easier medication management that comes with the free Sagely Pill Reminder App.
Online Support Groups for Family Caregivers
If you wish to talk to other caregivers and share your story and experiences, you can join one of many online support groups that can help you deal with the challenges of caregiving. For Facebook users, there are excellent groups like Caregivers Connect and Caregivers and the Eldercare Community. For Twitter users, there are #ElderCareChat or #CareChat. And there is always Caregiving.com, which is a site with numerous groups created to support caregivers from all walks of life.
Delegating Care
You may be your loved one's primary in home caregiver, but that does not mean you should do it all alone. Family and friends can help with some tasks, alleviating your daily burdens and stress. For managing your schedule and delegating care, you can use The Care Calendar by Lotsa Helping Hands, which is a completely free tool for family care providers.
Improving Safety
Falls are one of the most common causes of injury in seniors. While they may not always be preventable, with the use of personal emergency response systems such as Medical Guardian or Great Call's Lively, you can make sure that your loved one can call for help at any time.
Visiting Angels of Woodbridge, CT, is a leading provider of non-medical in home care services for seniors. Our office serves New Haven County, Fairfield County, Westchester County and all five boroughs of New York City, NY. To learn more about the in-home living assistance services provided by our staff of compassionate caregivers, please call our Newington office at (203) 397-6890 or contact us for more information.