Stay Safe; Stay well with Home Cancer Care Guidance

People with cancer should stay home longer, even in time of lockdown easing since those asymptomatic infections are still around. Cancer care at home is the challenging tasks for non-professional caretakers, mostly are family members, in taking daily medical and non-medical care duties in an amount of time. Cancer causes pain for patients physically and emotionally; hence, the caretakers need to focus on them as such.

Emotional health care;

> Communication. Caregivers need to talk openly with the patient. The goal of communication is to assure them all essential concerns, understanding, supportive and requests will be provided.

> Stay alert. People with cancer can experience a wide range of emotions, either sadness, fear, anxiety, stress, anger and depression. Caretakers need to look for the signs of emotionally unstable to make sure that the patient would receive help.

> Find the counselling or support groups. The caretaker should seek advice from professional for techniques to deal with each mental stage of patients. Also, the caregiver needs to take care of their own emotional health.

Physical health care;

> Join the appointments with the oncologist. You can prepare questions and concerns of patients to discuss with the doctor, also take the chance to ask the doctor your own questions and help take note. By doing so, you can fully understand the details of the illness and track record for patients such as results of treatments and tests, medications, symptoms and side effects.

> Congregate in-depth information about cancer. You can do research about the disease, focusing more on the patient’s type of cancer.

> Learn how to provide physical and medical care. Some patients need physical cares such as bathing, dressing, feeding or using the toilet. The medical care is more essential to learn as these tasks are usually the trained healthcare professional.

Communicate with healthcare team regularly. The team need to get updated details of the patient when at home. Also, the caretaker needs to know who they can reach out for medical advice anytime. Some medical clinic can provide cares in time of emergency. For instance, Akesis Life Integrative Oncology Clinic provides the 24-hour nurse-on-call to make sure all patients and caretaker access help anytime if need and also give medical home care services for the patients who are unable to go out to the clinic themselves.

Remember, the proper care at home is one of essential elements to help people with cancer to survive.  

Ref: https://www.cancer.net/coping-with-cancer/caring-loved-one/caregiving-home

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