Four Tips for Dealing with Wounds

Every now and again everyone experiences an injury. What matters is how you handle the situation if your elderly family member gets a cut or scrape. Reacting quickly can help her to heal much more quickly.

Home Care Services in Reston VA: Dealing with Wounds

Clean and Disinfect Wounds as Soon as You Find One

The faster that you act when you find a wound, the better. Even a few hours after your senior gets a cut or scrape the wound is starting to heal over. That traps bacteria and even debris under the scab and can make healing take a lot longer than it should. Keeping your senior’s medicine cabinet stocked with wound cleaning solutions, bandages, and antibiotic cream can make quick work of cleaning and disinfecting small cuts and wounds.

Stay Alert for Signs of Infection

Even the tiniest cuts and scrapes can become infected. You’ll know that there’s a problem if your senior mentions that the area hurts or if it’s becoming warm to the touch. You should also watch for redness around the wound itself, especially if that redness seems to be spreading a bit away from the original injury. If you see these signs, contact your senior’s doctor to make sure that the injury is handled properly.

Take a First Aid Course

You might feel more confident about handling these types of situations for your aging adult if you take a first aid course. These are fairly common courses that you can sign up for at will. Often community colleges, hospitals, and even some doctor’s offices offer them. The class will likely feel a bit repetitive, especially at first. But you’ll build your confidence around caring for your aging adult.

Home Care Providers Can Help

You might not be able to spend as much time with your senior as you’d like, and that might have you concerned about your elderly family member and injuries, especially if she has a diminished immune system at all. Home care providers can offer companionship and also watch for situations in which your elderly family member could benefit from help with a small injury.

If you’re noticing that your elderly family member seems to have more cuts and scrapes than usual, there may be something else going on. Pay attention also to whether it’s taking longer for wounds to heal. All of this information is vital to pass on to her doctor so that any underlying issues can be addressed for your senior.

Are you or a loved-one considering hiring Home Care Services in Reston, VA?  Please call the caring staff at Medical Professionals On Call today. Contact: 703-273-8818

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Michelle DeFilippis

I graduated with a BS degree and had been selling medical equipment to hospitals, clinics and technicians. More recently, a family member was diagnosed with dementia and we, as a family, realized we were not prepared t care for her. We were thrown into that whirlpool of hospital stays, 24/7 live-in care, skilled care, caring for mom ourselves and finally, now daily home care. This was such a stressful time that I started thinking there had to be other people, other families as overwhelmed and unprepared as we were.

Medical Professionals On Call has such a caring, professional staff who are available to step in with whatever level of care necessary for loved ones and to relieve you of that stress.

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