“To care for ones who once cared for us is one of the highest honours.” Tia Walker
If you are on the path to taking care of a senior loved one, you should know how vital a caregiver daily checklist becomes. In our article here, we check out what makes a great caregiver’s daily checklist for senior care. We also explore what digital tools you can use to make your caregiving tasks more efficiently managed.
Becoming a senior caregiver
It is expected that the families will provide help and support for the older parents, grandparents and other family members when they can’t continue living independently. Who will take on this role, for how long, how will it be organized and what duties will be entitled depends on various factors: the health condition of the care recipient, the diversity of family, internal relationships, the proximity of family members available to get involved, cultural background, caregiving setting, community and location, access to public health and care support.
Family caregivers seldom get adequate preparation for their role. A person’s entry into a senior caregiver’s role can happen gradually or may be caused by a sudden event, such as a serious health episode (stroke, fall, hip fracture, chronic illness diagnosis). Usually, it starts with an awareness that an older adult requires assistance with household tasks. The older adults often downplay and hide their need for care mostly because they are concerned about becoming a burden to others. Others may have difficulties in accepting they are losing independence. Helping with daily routines may be occasionally punctuated with additional responsibilities caused by episodic events such as short-term health problems, hospitalizations and rehabilitation programs.
When caring for seniors, the caregiving can take different and unpredicted directions. Still, undoubtedly the tasks are cumulative and more complex over time. This particularly applies for so-called “high-need” older adults with cancer, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and similar conditions which require constant assistance and supervision. The needs sequentially increase to self-care assistance, health and medication management, mobility, advocacy, and surrogate decision making. Each new stage brings the new and unique challenges the caregiver must confront. Unfortunately, senior care is a one-way road, leading to end-of-life care. This final phase may involve placement in a nursing home or enrollment into a hospice program.
Caregiver’s daily schedule for seniors
With over 53 million adults acting as caregivers in the USA only, the impact of caregiving is by far not something to underestimate. To top it all off, a more significant part of the caregivers attend to multiple people simultaneously, with seniors being top of the list of care recipients. Constantly increasing aging population, growing demand for senior care, less institutional support and higher costs of long-term care services burden many families. Additionally, family caregivers provide care to the seniors along with having other roles and responsibilities in their lives. It is never a sole duty, and if not managed well, it can easily undermine all other aspects of their lives.
For any caregiver, it is essential to perform all the tasks efficiently. When taking care of a senior, the care demands progressively accumulate, and it can be overwhelming to balance all the responsibilities. That’s why a well-planned daily organization becomes a crucial factor in caregiving, necessary for the well-being of all parties involved.
Caregiving duties are highly variable over time. Although determining what should be included in daily routine depends on the senior care stage, some tasks can be discerned as common points in each phase. We sorted out the essential caregiver daily checklist for senior care. For starters, it breaks down a caregiver’s responsibilities into quickly identifiable duties throughout the care recipient’s day. As a caregiver, you will know when and where you need to fine-tune your routine. The purpose of having and following a checklist is to declutter your schedule, lay off the pressure that you will forget some of the tasks, and help you have a sense of personal accomplishment.
Personal care
A senior’s hygiene is the first casualty of the lapses that come with aging. Here you can start with:
- Showering or bathing help
- Toileting
- Personal grooming such as shaving, styling, or brushing hair
- Dental care (tooth brushing or flossing)
- Skincare and makeup application
- Picking out the clothes and dressing
Health follow-up and medication management
Many seniors deal with one or more chronic conditions. Therefore, medication management is vital as a start to a caregiver schedule. Health and medication duties include:
- Sorting the medications, organizing the intakes, checking and refilling the dispensing solutions;
- If necessary, checking and recording the senior’s body vitals (such as blood pressure, blood glucose, body temperature, breathing, etc.);
- Carrying out any prescribed exercises, therapies or medical care that go beyond the typical tasks;
- Setting up and attending any medical appointments and updating the physician or nurse.
Dementia is prevalent among 5-8% of the senior population above 60 years. As the condition progresses, more supervision is required, and the care recipient is more dependent on caregivers for all health and care activities.
Throughout the day
Proper nutrition is necessary to maintain the health of the senior. As a caregiver, this means you will need to be involved and later be in charge of:
- Preparing prescribed meals, fruits, or snacks;
- Aiding with drinking and eating to ensure proper intake;
- Helping with grocery shopping to ensure a balanced diet.
Everyday errands can also become a considerable area of your obligations, especially if the senior still has mobility. You may be responsible for making a company, organizing the transportation and helping the senior with getting around to:
- Shopping for groceries and household items.
- Organize the appointments with health care providers.
- Advocate with different services and providers.
- Pay bills and services.
If the senior has reduced or no mobility, these duties will be solely your responsibility.
Housekeeping
Not forgetting, the best caregiver daily checklist should have a cleaning phase or things can get messy quickly. It’s easier to divide the cleaning tasks into several days and do each day a bit than to wait for everything to pile up.
- Taking out the garbage
- Doing laundry
- Washing and putting away dishes
- Bathroom cleaning
- Changing the bedding
- Vacuuming and mopping the floors
- Cleaning the dust
- Garden/terrace maintenance
- Checking and retrieving mails
For the household errands that anyone can do, don’t hesitate to ask for help from other family members or friends.
Social life
Maintaining a social life is important for every individual’s well-being, regardless the age. As long as possible, you should encourage, facilitate, and participate in your elderly family members’ social activities. It can be a walk, senior exercise or yoga classes, their favourite hobby, gardening, organizing meetups with their peers or other family members, celebrating birthdays and holidays together. Filling up their pastime with different social activities will reduce the sense of abandonment, isolation and depression, and keep their spirits up. Don’t forget that if they are old, that doesn’t mean they cannot fully enjoy life.
For the seniors diagnosed with dementia, during the early phases, you can include different memory care activities, such as puzzle games, painting, music or their favourite hobby. You can organize simple social activities in familiar surroundings where they feel safe.
In the evening
Many caregivers take the evenings and nighttime as their time to relax and recharge. If your senior is a night owl, you can enjoy together in some leisure activities like book reading or watching a film. If your senior goes early to bed, you can use this free evening time for other duties and yourself. You must find some time for yourself, to disconnect from daily problems, lessen the stress, and prevent caregiver burnout.
Caregiving digital tools
In this digital age, we have advantages and opportunities to integrate the latest technologies in practical ways to ease our everyday lives. There are various digital tools you can use to mitigate your caregiving tasks. From task organizers, medication management, to reminders and motion detectors, we can find many apps to help us navigate our daily duties more efficiently. Additionally, we have significant advances in health trackers and medical gadgets to monitor vitals and different conditions. Smart homes, surveillance systems and home security are also more affordable. These systems can be very helpful for seniors aging in place, with our without company. They can offer peace of mind for long-distance caregivers in charge of the senior family members, as they can be remotely accessed and controlled.
How can Gherry App transform your daily caregiving?
Whether a caregiver or a senior, the Gherry app is a digital solution to transform daily caregiving in the future. With the population aging like never before, the app intends to present you with a digital healthcare ecosystem for all-things senior caregiving.
Gherry was created to help caregivers and seniors feel in control of all daily health and care activities. It’s a definite consideration if you are looking to stay on top of any daily caregiver checklist. Besides providing an extensive overview of senior healthcare under a single digital platform, the app covers everything from medications, records, contacts, expenses to daily updates and feedback on tasks.
Here is how Gherry app aims to be a great resource in caring for your senior loved one:
- You have the complete medication management with precise intake schedule and stock.
- You have all the health trackers in one place. Their records and history will help you have an overview of the monitored conditions.
- The medical card with all health information and trackers and medication history will help you report and provide valuable information to the health care providers.
- Reminders and alerts will keep you on top of all duties.
- You can have multiple care recipients profiles to organize care for several persons at the same time.
- You can include all persons involved in care, keep them instantly updated, and assign the load of tasks with them.
- You can easily organize and share all the relevant documents: activities and appointments schedule, to-do lists, notes, expenses, photos and contacts.
With all in one place and always accessible, you will avoid having any paperwork, additional lists and fear of forgetting tasks. It provides you with better control, for better organization and more efficiency.
Bottom line
As a caregiver of senior family members, you should prepare yourself that a load of your tasks and responsibilities will only grow. Unfortunately, no one can predict how gradually that can happen. To be on the top of your duties, you should try to stick to the schedules, organize yourself with checklists, and involve others to help you out wherever it is possible. Luckily, with the advantages of new technologies, you can easily find digital allies and tools to manage your duties more efficiently. Even when it’s hard, remember that caring for elderly family members or friends is a privilege and not a burden. Enjoy your time with them, because once the memories you collect now will be your greatest treasure.
