Healthcare to Homecare
Bridging the Gap
to
Care at Home
Hi, I am Donna Steigleder.
Ever wish you could go to one site and click on all the resources you needed? I have.
That was my inspiration behind creating Healthcare to Homecare (HTH). One place that links all the resources a caregiver needs to use. In addition, I threw in information on how to do things a caregiver needs to do. I share stories about how I survived being a caregiver for over thirty years (mother, father, daughter, and husband). On pages dedicated to community and government resources, I connect you to as many free groups and agencies as possible to help you.
Healthcare to Homecare bridges the gap for family caregivers between the professional healthcare systems and taking on the responsibility of providing care at home yourself. Use the buttons below to link to available subject areas. Forms are available below if you have questions or concerns you would like to submit.
God Bless
Donna.
Why Visit Healthcare to HomeCare?
Something for Everyone
Yes, Healthcare to Homecare has something for everyone. You’ll find helpful information whether you are a new or experienced caregiver.
Becoming a family caregiver usually means taking on additional responsibility without losing any jobs you already juggle. Many caregivers shoulder full or part-time jobs outside the home. Most are in relationships with a partner with whom they share a home that requires maintenance and regular upkeep. For some, add children and community involvement, such as church activities, sports, clubs, etc. The caregiver finds what was an over-booked schedule becoming a triple-booked one.
Furthermore, when the family caregiver takes their “patient” home to provide care, they leave the hospital with basic instructions and a follow-up appointment in two weeks. Even if Home Health visits are ordered, healthcare professionals usually stay one to two hours. What is the family caregiver supposed to do for the other twenty-two hours? Family caregivers rarely have healthcare training. Therefore, when left at home alone with their “patient” for the first few days, they feel lost, do not know what to do, and need answers to questions they didn’t know to ask before leaving the hospital.
The purpose of Healthcare to Homecare is to help provide some of those answers and to help direct family caregivers to many others they may find helpful.
How to Navigate the Website
HTH provides a broad array of topics on family caregiving. I grouped posts with similar themes, then subdivided ideas within each group again to make it easier to find the posts you wanted to read. Brief descriptions appear with each title shown to help you decide if the subject interests you. Press the “Learn More” button to access that post if it does.
If you have questions about one of the posts, a link, or anything else on the website, please contact me at DsteiglederH2H@gmail.com.
Thank you.
Life's Journey
Life’s Journey
As the author of Healthcare to Homecare, I ask you to trust that the information and opinions I share and express have merit. Therefore, I decided to be transparent about my education, training, experience, values, and beliefs in Life’s Journey. From obtaining my nursing degree to becoming a long-time family caregiver, patient safety, quality care, and compassion come first for me.
The more you know about your family member’s medical condition, treatment plan, and potential resources, the more likely your care receiver (i.e., family member) is to have a complete recovery. I encourage you to read some of my blogs written over the years. Chances are that you will identify with the types of challenges I faced as a new caregiver trying to adapt to a role I did not want to face.
Finally, I want to share my faith with you, not in an attempt to convert you, but to share with you how much God helped me survive my years of caregiving and how He continues to support me through my days of grieving now that Lynn has passed. Without Jesus covering my back and meeting my needs often long before I knew what I needed, I do not know how I would have coped many days.
Adapting
Being flexible and learning to adapt is a survival skill for caregivers. A caregiver’s life can change in the “blink of an eye,” requiring almost instantaneous adjustments. Knowing how to reorganize your life at home while limiting the impact on external commitments is one of the topic areas I explore in Adapting.
After a while many caregivers learn to accept that clinging to possessions and routines can be counter-productive to caregiver survival. However, losing those safety-nets creates feelings of loss and insecurity. Is there a way to have one without the other? I’ll share some practical ideas on how I adapted to change.
Healthcare 101
When someone you care about gets sick, you must learn to care for them and navigate the healthcare world if you want the best outcome for their health and well-being. In the last ten years, healthcare has changed. Fewer healthcare professionals do the work, and fewer healthcare facilities offer services. The result is that doctors send patients home for families to provide care.
However, hospitals expect families to follow the same rules in the home as those observed in the hospital with limited training provided. As a result, patients are at risk for more significant harm and complications, and caregivers deal with a mountain of frustration.
The more you know about the healthcare world, the easier it is to avoid some of this. Welcome to Healthcare 101.
Medical Topics
Healthcare professionals rarely have more than a few minutes to spend going over information with you about your medical condition. It is not because they do not want to help but because they are short-staffed and have too much paperwork to meet regulatory requirements. However, that does not allow you to know how to care for your family who is sick.
Under Medical Topics, I cover a variety of subjects that people deal with at home when sick or injured. That is a lot of topics; therefore, I have multiple subcategories to make it easier for you to find information. If you cannot find the subject you need, send me a request using the request form in the “Contact Me” section. I will research the topic and reply with what I can find.
Mental Health Topics
As individuals age, it is common for them to develop memory impairment conditions affecting their ability to care for themselves safely. Family members may find it necessary to assume their care due to failure to take medications or frequent injuries occurring from unsafe behaviors. Thus, knowing how to interact successfully with individuals whose personalities changed when developing a medical condition or following a traumatic brain injury can help reduce the frustrations and safety risks that can occur when emotions get out of hand.
In addition, in the last decade, school systems have reported a definite increase in the number of learning disabilities and autism in classrooms. Classrooms are more crowded than ever, preventing many children from receiving the individual education plans established for them at the beginning of the school year—adults who know how to de-escalate someone in an emotional state. Mental Health Topics provides information about mental health conditions and techniques for managing various behavior challenges.
Resources
I’ve gathered two types of resources to help you search for supplies and information. One has to do with government resources – the types that require you to file paperwork to ask questions, get benefits, or help you do anything. All of them are connected to a local, state, or federal government agency.
The other one is about free community resources. Most of these are the “condition” or “cause” groups that have “everything you want to know” about a specific condition. Please take the time to contact them. You can learn a lot from people who have lived with your condition, and the best part is that the information is usually free. They ask for donations, but giving is not required.
