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In brief, complex care, also known as long-term care or continuing care, is given to patients with significant, continuing healthcare issues such as chronic illness and disabilities that can arise after receiving hospital treatment.
These health care issues could include brain damage, spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, ventilators, Gastrostomy feed needs such as PEG, Epilepsy, and learning disabilities.
Complex care requires the carer to be proficient in an array of specific caring methods, which can be learnt and taught at dedicated training centres.
As well as providing complex care, carers should also consider facilitating patients to lead independent, active, and fulfilled lives whenever possible.
The aim of complex care from Helping Hands is to enable you, as much as possible, to do the things you want to do, whilst being surrounded by the place you know and love the most; your home. With that in mind, our packages of care are completely individual to you, which means they’re flexible and can adapt around your changing needs too.
We recognise that everyone’s care situation is completely different – whether you’ve just come out of hospital and need care for a for weeks or months to help you get you back on your feet, or if you have a complex condition that you’ve lived with since birth and want to be able to live by yourself.
Use a care plan – This is a summary of a patient’s history, medication, doctors names and other vital information that can be used by a carer who is taking the patient’s case for the first time in order to learn as much about them as possible. This gives credibility to your service as a carer.
Medication and symptom record keeping – This is a must and records should be kept over long periods. The importance of this is to help to communicate this information to doctors and other members of the care team.
Multidisciplinary meetings – These are a great way to get specialists together to talk about the patient. They don’t have to occur regularly, perhaps only annually, but it gets them asking questions to each other and makes a huge difference.
Second opinions – It’s always best to get second opinions from doctors and other carers. If a patient’s family asks for a second opinion don’t be offended, they are only trying to do what is best for their loved one.