Providing for the aged is the historical trend of urbanization and industrialization in China. Due to the national characteristics of family-centered old-age care in China, most elderly people in China basically adopt home-based old-age care, that is, relying on children or relatives to provide for the elderly, and relatives take care of their various physiological and life needs during the old-age care. The only child in the city goes out to work, which also causes a large number of elderly people to stay in empty nests. However, because the elderly are old, weak and sick, nursing means not only looking at "illness" but also "people". Among them, night care for the elderly is in the sensitive period of rest and sleep for ordinary people, so its nursing characteristics are more prominent.
Evening care for the elderly usually begins after dinner and lasts until the next morning. Night care for the elderly includes gargling, washing face, washing hands, washing feet, pouring water and massage. In addition, making the bed before going to bed and adding blankets or quilts to the nursing objects when necessary also belong to this category. The key point of night nursing is to create a quiet and comfortable sleeping condition through night nursing, and to provide the help the elderly need in time after they suddenly wake up in the middle of the night for some reason. So, how to take care of the elderly at home at night?
1. Have dinner early.
Because old people go to bed early, they will go to bed at 90 o'clock. If they eat at 7 or 8 o'clock, their bodies simply don't have enough time to digest food thoroughly, which is very prone to indigestion such as abdominal distension and constipation, and may also affect the quality of sleep. In addition, if dinner is too close to bedtime, the body does not have enough time to excrete calcium through urination, which may cause urinary calculi. Therefore, caregivers should try to arrange for the elderly to finish their dinner before 7 o'clock at the latest.
Fall asleep on time
Older people generally have a relatively standard schedule. If they suddenly stay up late or go to bed in the morning, they will lose sleep because of excessive brain excitement. Therefore, the nursing staff should arrange for the elderly to have a fixed sleep time every day, do proper exercise one hour before going to bed, and then soak their feet with warm water to help them sleep. In order to avoid insomnia, the elderly should not drink strong tea or smoke after meals; Don't drink too much water before going to bed, and don't be too full for dinner; Avoid mental stress and strenuous exercise before going to bed.
Fall asleep on time
Older people generally have a relatively standard schedule. If they suddenly stay up late or go to bed in the morning, they will lose sleep because of excessive brain excitement. Therefore, the nursing staff should arrange for the elderly to have a fixed sleep time every day, do proper exercise one hour before going to bed, and then soak their feet with warm water to help them sleep. In order to avoid insomnia, the elderly should not drink strong tea or smoke after meals; Don't drink too much water before going to bed, and don't be too full for dinner; Avoid mental stress and strenuous exercise before going to bed.
4. Comfortable environment
Comfortable environment is conducive to promoting sleep, and adequate sleep can relieve physical fatigue and promote the recovery of nerve cell function. Ensure the comfortable bedroom environment for the elderly and create a warm and comfortable environment for the elderly. At night, the room temperature is kept at 25 degrees Celsius and the humidity is 50 ~ 70%. In the cold season, pay special attention to the warmth of the lower limbs of the elderly when sleeping to prevent sudden convulsions at night. If the elderly have asthma, the indoor environment should be warm and humid. For asthma patients, it is forbidden to put flowers and blankets indoors, and allergy tests should be done when using allergic drugs.
Prevent suffocation
The elderly should ban irritating and high-fat meals at night and avoid irritating drinks such as tea, wine and coffee to avoid reflux of gastric juice. Nursing staff should regularly turn over and pat the back for the elderly with mobility difficulties, so as to ensure that the blood circulation will not be affected by keeping a body odor for a long time when the elderly sleep. In addition, caregivers should keep the sheets clean and tasteless, and replace them in time when they are polluted. When the elderly have difficulty breathing, they should be given a semi-sitting and lying position, which will reduce the diaphragm, increase the lung ventilation and reduce the blood volume, which is conducive to the elimination of sputum and keep the respiratory tract unobstructed.
6. Night surveillance
At night, the mental state of the elderly and caregivers is extremely tired. If we only rely on the eyes of caregivers or the children of the elderly to take care of them, it will not only be inefficient, but also affect the work and life of young people during the day. It is best to install a baby monitor with infrared night vision function in the family (note: this equipment is named because it is often used for early care of infants, but it is also suitable for night care of the elderly). One end of this device is installed in the bedroom of the elderly, and the camera is aimed at the sofa of the elderly. Nurses or children can see the sleeping situation of the elderly through the handheld monitoring screen at the other end within 200-250 meters of the elderly. When the old man turns over or makes a phone call at night, the monitor will automatically send out a signal through motion detection and sound detection, and send out a wake-up alarm through the receiving end held by the child. After the child opens the screen, what reason can he call the police? If they find that the elderly need caregivers to take care of themselves, they can also provide the services they say they need in time.
Coping with cramps
Because the elderly are prone to calcium deficiency, at night, with the decrease of calcium ion concentration in the serum of the elderly, the excitability of nerves and muscles increases, so it is easier to induce leg cramps at night. In addition, cold, long-term bending of the lower limbs or sudden stretching of the legs after sleeping often induce calf cramps.
In the evening, when the nursing staff find that the elderly have cramps through the baby monitor or visual inspection, some nursing staff will let the elderly get out of bed and walk immediately, and force them to cramp with the forefoot of the affected foot, which is very undesirable, because suddenly sitting up at night will lead to sudden blood return to the brain and even lead to acute stroke. The correct treatment method is:
1, you should immediately press Renzhong point with your thumb or forefinger until you feel pain at the point.
2. Press both sides of heel with thumb and forefinger, and rub up and down hard.
3. The caregiver helps the old man sit up slowly, straighten his legs, and then break the soles of his feet toward the instep with both hands.
8. Drink water at night
Studies have proved that proper drinking water at night for the elderly can alleviate the high blood viscosity and concentration, prevent thrombosis and resist cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Therefore, nurses should serve the elderly to get up and drink a glass of water at night, even if they are not thirsty. Let the old people get up in the middle of the night to drink water, without waking them up in their sleep. You can choose to let the elderly drink a small cup of warm water of 40-50 degrees when they wake up or turn over at night, and be careful not to choke when drinking water.
9. insomnia in the middle of the night
Old people may wake up in the middle of the night because of worry or physiological reasons and can't sleep. At this time, nursing staff should not force the elderly to stay in bed. Can let the elderly lean on the edge of the bed, maintain a comfortable and conducive to blood circulation sitting posture, nurses can patiently chat with the elderly, relax the spirit of the elderly. When breastfeeding and chatting at night, try to understand the causes of insomnia. If it is because of the people around you, it can be solved during the day.
10. Personnel quality
At night, due to the influence of the rhythm of life, the subjective adjustment ability of the elderly's family members or caregivers decreases, and their attention is not concentrated, so it is easy to ignore the observation of the sudden changes of the elderly at night. Therefore, in addition to using the wireless baby monitor to detect the night activities of the elderly and trigger care, caregivers and their families should take turns to care for the elderly, and it is not recommended that the same person be responsible for the night care of the elderly for a long time. Long-term night care will lead to mental disorder and distraction of caregivers. Once the condition of the elderly suddenly changes at night, it is impossible to find and judge the seriousness of the problem at the first time. If you are willing, you will get worse if you neglect to deal with small problems in time. Caregivers should have enough patience and moral cultivation.