Long Term Care Blog 2

Who had ever heard of a Adult Day Care. Not me. After hearing the term I was intrigued to find out more about it. Do they treat them like children? Do they have little pins set up where they can play in? Those are the things I think about when I hear Day Care. The book describes it as a service that "provides daily (not overnight) services for chronically ill individuals who are not able to function on their own but are able to live at home with the assistance of informal caregivers" (pg 19). These individuals are given the care that they need during the day that their usual caregiver provides for them. They aren't treated like children, but better yet, and special individuals with their every need being cared for. It might be a funny name for the service, but whoever came up with it was a genius. These elders can come in the comfort of knowing that they have certified people to tend to them while they are there during the day. The formal caregivers (staff members of health care organizations) provide for their needs while the informal caregivers (family members) cannot. What is special about the formal caregivers is their true desire to want to help the ones that cannot help themselves.

What does Long Term Care mean to me?

Even though I am only 20, Long Term Care has had a huge impact in my life. When I was in high school I decided to volunteer at a nursing home and was opened up to a world I was not familiar with. Although it is not a career I would want to pursue I was forever impacted by the elder men and women I met. A lot of them had family members visit every day, but some did not. I felt that it was the staffs duty to take them under their wing and be the family they did not have. Most of them would die in that nursing home because their illnesses were a part of their life.
My grandmother was recently in a long term care facility after being released from the ICU because she did not have the health to come home. I think Long Term Care is not a part of the health industry most people really recognize or want to recognize. I believe it is different from departments in the hospital because instead of curing they are just caring for them and making their lives as comfortable as possible.