One of the most common situations you'll face as a home health care aide is working with people who are physically disabled. This means dealing with people who have disabilities which prevent them from engaging in the full range of motion possible for a non disabled person. Disabilities can range from mild disabilities to major ones. The important point here however is that these people will need help in managing their day to day lives. Here's what you need to know:
Causes of Physical Disability
While the cause of a disability doesn't necessarily change the kind of help the home health care patient needs, it does change the way they feel about it and as such, it changes the way that you need to handle emotional issues related to your clients.
Developmental (At or Near Birth)
The first kind of disability which you may be dealing with as a home health care professional is a developmental disability. This means that the person requiring home health care has been disabled for most or all of his or her life. This is important because someone who has experienced disabilities all of her life will be more likely to have come to accept the situation, given that they've never known anything else.
Injury/Disease Related
The second possibility is injury or disease related disabilities. In this case, your home care patients who are physically disabled have been that way for varying lengths of time and likely experienced life without this disability prior to their accident or illness. In this case, it's possible that you may be dealing with emotional trauma in addition to dealing with physical disabilities since the person is mourning the loss of what they once had.
Emotional Trauma and Frustration
In both cases however, it is possible that the person will experience emotional trauma and frustration related to their disabilities for the simple reason that they know they are unable to do everything they might otherwise be able to do. Therefore, it's important for you as a home health care aide working with the physically disabled to be sensitive to this and to deal with these issues appropriately.
Temporary Vs. Permanent
Another important consideration when working with home health care patients who are physically disabled is that you need to consider whether their disability is expected to be permanent or temporary. This is important because those who have a disability which is expected to be temporary should be encouraged to work toward the day when they are able to overcome the disability. By contrast, home health care patients with permanent disabilities should be encouraged to work toward the day when they can accept their disabilities as part of their lives and realize that being disabled doesn't mean that they are worth anything less than those who are not disabled.
Your Daily Work
As a home health care aide working with those who are physically disabled, your work will include many of the same kinds of jobs that most other home health care aides must perform. These include basic needs, such as helping the person with bathing, dressing and eating as well as more complex tasks, including arranging transportation.
Getting family and Social Support
It is also important that you recruit family and friends to help support your patient so that he or she doesn't feel as if they have been abandoned. This includes making sure that the family understands that the disabled person is not someone to be pitied but should instead be treated in as normal a fashion as possible, allowing the person to feel as if they are able to move past their initial experiences and to integrate into society.
Dealing with Society
It's also important to help your home health care patients with physical disabilities to integrate into society as much as possible. Often, those with physical disabilities find it difficult to integrate into society as non disabled persons shun them. While you obviously cannot change the world, it's important to help your client to maintain a feeling of self worth and independence in whatever way possible so as to ensure that they are able to overcome these problems in whatever way they can.
How You Can Help
There are a number of specific things that you can do as a home health care worker with the physically disabled which will allow them to feel as if they are able to continue with their lives. Some examples include:
Maintaining Dignity
It's important for the disabled person to maintain their own dignity and self worth. This means that wherever possible, you need to allow the person to take care of their own needs rather than relying on someone else. For example, while you may have to help the person in a wheelchair into and out of the bathtub, there is often no reason that he cannot take care of his own physical needs once inside the tub, assuming he is paralyzed only from the waist down.
Preserving a Normal Lifestyle
Another thing which is extremely important for the physically disabled home health care patient is maintaining a normal routine. This means being able to help the person to accept life while at the same time helping them to keep up with all the things they always did in the past. This is especially important when working with physically disabled patients who were disabled later in life as opposed to those who grew up with it – they need to adjust while at the same time maintaining as normal a routine as is possible given their new circumstances.
Of course, those who were born with disabilities may also experience problems where they need help in maintaining a normal life. This is especially true when working with children who are physically disabled as their peers may not be as sensitive to the needs of the disabled person as adults in general society.
Bottom Line
The bottom line is that working with those who are physically disabled as home health care patients can be a challenging experience. However ultimately, it really boils down to making sure that they are able to maintain a life which is as normal and routine as possible in much the same way as others who are not disabled.