Tag: illness

Common Medication Errors

SafetyOne of the most important aspects of physical safety for chronic patients is dealing with the myriad of medications involved in their care.  In fact, medication errors may be one of the first warning signs you saw that led you to realizing your loved one needed additional help.

A great resource for reducing medication errors is this article provided by the Mayo Clinic.  You will find many medical safety ideas that you may not have already considered.

Another article that is helpful in avoiding medication errors is from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Here you will find some specific warnings about certain medications that need close monitoring as well as excellent tips for managing medications.

Your aging loved one may not be ready to give up control of medication management.  This may take some time to convince him/her.  For us, it took quite a bit of conversation and an unfortunate hospital visit for our mother to give up that control and allow us to fill her pill box weekly.  She had become quite ill and had to spend weeks recovering from the effects of medication errors she had unwittingly committed.  We were lucky that the effects of medication misuse hadn’t become permanent, yet.

Remember to use the genus™ App to keep your loved ones’ medications list up to date.  It truly is worth the time and effort to input the medication data into the app.  This part of the app in the Medical platform will provide you with medical safety information when you visit the doctor’s office, consult with a pharmacist, or make a plan for safe medication dispersal.   All this at the tip of your fingertips, wherever you are!   Together, we can care better.

Medical Safety for Receivers of Care

One of the most frustrating things to deal with when caring for an aging parent is the many health complications that arise as one ages.   Medical safety is of key concern.  Many family member also acting as caregivers have not had a great deal of experience dealing with doctors and various medical safety issues.   There are many questions that arise, making the whole caring experience a bit overwhelming without the proper information.

Using the Genus™ App

You can document your loved one’s medical conditions in the medical section of the app, list the doctor contact info for that condition along with pertinent medications.  To have all this information literally at your fingertips on your phone is invaluable.   All it takes is one person dedicated to entering the information, and once it is there, any approved member of your care community can easily access this important info as needed.   The end result is caring better, together.

Most important to medical safety is the value of tracking specific medical information inside the app.  Maybe you want to track the patient’s blood pressure and heart rate each day, along with their mood and mobility factor.  All of this is easy to do with the touch of a few keys using the Genus App.

Help in an Emergency

I can honestly say that if I had this app available to me when my dad was alive as we were caring for him with his Alzheimer’s condition, it would have been very helpful.   More than once I was called by the nursing home to say that my dad was being sent to the ER due to a fall or something similar.  Always in the middle of the night.  Then I would go to the ER, sleepy and bleary-eyed, being asked all kinds of questions by the doctors of which I had no answers for.   You see, I wasn’t the family member in charge of the medical information. That was my sister Jane.  She was the medical guru of the family and did a wonderful job keeping track of our parents’ medical conditions and appointments.  But that one person can’t always be available during an emergency.  Had I had the medical information on my phone, as we can do with the Genus App, it would have provided better emergency care for my dad and much less frustration for us both.  I am grateful to have this App to use with my mom, especially the emergency feature: the little red cross.   I have all the pertinent information at my fingertips!  What a relief!!

Another helpful website

For dealing with medical safety, go to https://healthfinder.gov/     Here you can type in the age of your patient and see what recommended health screenings are suggested as well as find out information on a variety of health issues that may be affecting our loved ones.   There is plethora of information here to help you navigate through these complex health issues.