What Does 24-Hour Care Include?

As the name suggests, 24-hour care involves taking on a professional caregiver to look after your loved one with dementia. This is usually considered one of the best ways to provide comfort for the patient to stay in familiar surroundings, and assure you that someone is always watching over them. As the patient may lose awareness of their surroundings and begin losing the ability to manage daily tasks by themselves, the caregiver is there to ensure their safety and support them however they may need.

Professional caregivers help carry out all day-to-day activities of the patient and complete all their chores. For example, professional caregivers can help in bathing, washing, undressing, dressing, cooking meals, looking after their nutrition and weight, and ensuring they take their medication on time.

One of the advantages of hiring a professional caregiver is that many are specifically trained to look after people with dementia. They know exactly how to communicate with dementia patients and are capable of handling sensitive problems such as sundowning, wandering, and mood swings.

Signs Your Loved One Needs 24-Hour Care

Go through the following signs to understand whether your loved one with dementia requires 24-hour assistance from a professional caregiver.

Aggression and Other Behavioral Changes

Note if and when your loved one with dementia begins to show uncharacteristic signs of aggression or mood swings and try to track their frequency and severity. This behavior is usually a call for help as they’re either bored, lonely, hungry or in pain and are struggling to communicate that in a logical manner. It can get quite difficult for someone with limited knowledge of dementia to understand what they need at any given time and communicate effectively with the patient.

Caregiver Exhaustion

As mentioned earlier, caring for a person with dementia is never easy, especially for someone who is inexperienced in caregiving. After a point of time, an inexperienced caregiver may become overwhelmed, stressed, and burnt out with having to take care of their loved one with dementia. This is usually called caregiver strain and they develop this by constantly neglecting themselves. This can lead to chronic stress. The symptoms of chronic stress are:

• Anxiety
• Anger
• Exhaustion
• Depression
• Social withdrawal
• Feelings of guilt when taking time for oneself
• Denial

If you feel like any of these apply to you, it may be time to look into assistance from a professional caregiver.

Forgetfulness

One of the first signs of dementia is memory loss. This issue only worsens with time and eventually interferes with daily activities. Increased forgetfulness can even make the person forget to carry out daily chores. Subsequently, they may forget to take care of themselves, may not finish daily activities, and may begin to neglect their hygiene. This exacerbates feelings of stress in both the caregiver and the patient.

Sundowning

Sundowning is a set of symptoms that usually occur in the early evenings or late afternoons in dementia patients. The symptoms include:

• Agitation
• Aggression
• Wandering
• Pacing
• Anxiety
• Hallucinations
• Yelling

Sundowning primarily occurs with the onset of darkness. This particular period during the day can become increasingly stressful and exhausting for the caregiver as it changes the routine of the entire family and the person with dementia. If 24-hour care seems excessive for your family but your loved one experiences these symptoms, overnight professional care may be an option to look into.

Mobility Problems

An individual with dementia may suddenly experience a heightened bout of mobility with the onset of the disease. One of the most prominent examples of this is known as wandering. Wandering is defined as repetitive or frequent behavior which manifests itself as straying from the environment they are in or random patterns of pacing that could be associated with trying to escape.

Wandering is quite dangerous for dementia patients because they are mostly unaware of their surroundings and could end up with them getting lost or injured. Therefore, if your loved one with dementia tends to wander then it is probably time you looked for someone who can keep an eye on them at all times.

Looking Forward

Watching over your loved one with dementia can get exceedingly challenging for an inexperienced caregiver, and feelings of exhaustion and being overwhelmed can eventually compound on your health.

Therefore, to ensure the safety of your physical and mental well-being it is a good choice to hire a professional caregiver who is equipped with all the tools required to look after your loved one with dementia when you are not able to.

Our team at Evva Health is working to make coordinating care for your loved one easier — whether that’s within your family, neighborhood, or seeking out professional help for your care management. Our Care Teams will be designed for you and the other helpers in your community to ensure that no one person is shouldering too heavy of a responsibility by themselves.

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