Elderly Care Tips: Questions to Ask Your Parent’s Doctor Before You Leave a Sick Visit

Elderly Care in Raleigh, NC

No matter how aggressive your germ control efforts and how carefully you care for your loved ones in an effort to keep them healthy and strong, it is likely that you are going to encounter a time when they catch one of the bugs that are going around. While your seniors getting sick is not something that you want to encounter during your elderly care journey, if you are well prepared you can feel more confident getting your parents the care that they need as quickly as possible so they can get well and return to their active, engaged lifestyle. This starts with getting them to their doctor so that they can get a thorough examination and an appropriate diagnosis. It is important to remember that many different types of illnesses can look extremely similar but require different forms of treatment and can have different implications for your seniors and their ongoing health, so getting the correct diagnosis is critical to ensuring that they get on the proper course of treatment and get well quickly.

Asking questions is something that you should do any time you go to the doctor with your parents, but when they are going for a sick visit these questions are even more important. Asking the right questions and making sure that you understand the answers helps you to understand what your parents are going through and what you can do within your elderly care routine to help them recover effectively and efficiently.

Questions that you should ask before you leave a sick visit with your aging loved ones include:

• What is the exact diagnosis? Make sure that you actually know what your parents are dealing with before you leave the office. You do not want to just have the understanding of “they are sick”, but have an actual name for what they have so that you can have proper records of the conditions that your parents have faced and provide accurate information if they go in for other forms of treatment later.
• What symptoms should they expect? You want to know exactly what symptoms they should expect so that you can detect if they start experiencing symptoms that are not related to the sickness that the doctor diagnosed them with. This allows you to check in with the doctor if these symptoms become more severe or if the treatment that they receive for the condition of their diagnosis does not resolve their symptoms.
• What medications should they take? Take careful notes regarding what the doctor has prescribed, the dosage, dosage schedule, and possible side effects. Also make sure that you note any over-the-counter medications that they should or should not take during their recovery.
• What should you do to help them get better? Get clear recommendations for what you and your parent’s referred caregiver should do to help them get through their recovery, including how much rest they should get, if a humidifier might help, and when you should check back in with the doctor if they are not getting better.

Source
http://www.livestrong.com/blog/7-questions-ask-doctor-youre-sick/
http://www.cmsschicago.org/chicago-senior-pulse-blog/2015/7/15/what-to-ask-doctors-before-leaving-the-hospital.aspx