*** Welcome to piglix ***

Activities of daily living assistance


Assisting in activities of daily living (ADL) are skills required in nursing and other professions such as nursing assistants.

Personal assistance is waged support of 20 or more hours a week for people with impairments. A 2008 review reported that personal assistance is possibly beneficial to some older people and their informal carers. Further research is needed to assess which models of personal assistant are more efficient, as well as their relative total costs.

Inactive patients must be turned every two hours, which is the minimum time that a bed sore can develop. To move a bedridden patient to the side, the patient is first pulled closer to the opposite side that they are turning to give room to maneuver. When the patient is turned to the side, a pillow is usually placed to the back to support that position.

A pillow is often placed at the head of the bed to protect the head from any injury when moving a bedridden patient up in bed. Often the patient is turned to one side at a time to place a friction reducing sheet under the patient. When moving up, the patient is asked to bend knees and push with their legs while their chin is to their chest to prevent neck injury. The patient is pulled up either by the friction reducing sheet or draw sheet.

For a bed bath, a bath blanket is put over the patient and only the area washed is exposed at a time for privacy and warmth. To make a mitt out of a washcloth, the fingers and palm of the dominant hand are placed over the washcloth and the washcloth is folded over the fingers and palm. The remaining part of the washcloth not covering the fingers and palms will be folded over and tucked in and the thumb will be out of the mitt.

The eyes are cleaned, usually first, without soap to avoid irritation. The eye is cleaned from the inner side near the nose to the outer edge to avoid carrying debris to the tear duct. The cloth is rinsed or turned before going to the other eye to prevent spreading any organisms. Each area is dried at a time before washing the next area. For perineal care, the perineum is washed from least contaminated to most contaminated to reduce the spread of microorganisms. For females, the labia is spread and washed from the pubic area toward the anal area and not the other way around. For males, the tip of the penis is cleaned first and cleaned away from the meatus. In an uncircumcised penis, the foreskin is retracted and immediately put back in place to avoid compromising circulation and the foreskin is not retracted for children in order to prevent injury.


...
Wikipedia

...