Communicate Caregiving Responsibilities with Other Family Members
Caregiver apps help you make sure your loved one is healthy & happy
Ensuring everyone is on the same page of your aging loved one’s care is essential for family caregiving. Whether you are the sole caregiver or if others help you with your loved one’s care, trying to organize caregiving responsibilities can sometimes lead to misunderstandings. Caregiver apps help improve communication and create transparency between family members.
Caregiver apps, such as VerifyCare, can provide support for family caregivers and allows you to keep a detailed record of the care your loved one receives. Keeping everyone informed about their care is important, especially with long-distance caregivers. By using caregiver app, staying involved with all aspects of family caregiving has never been easier.
Whether you are focused on independent living or aging in place, below are ways caregiving apps can help manage caregiving responsibilities between family members.
Create a Care Team for Your Loved One
As a family caregiver, a support system is important for you and your loved one. In caregiving apps this support system is called something like a “Care Team”. As part of the Care Team, they can view and participate in your loved one’s care. Between a shared calendar, a virtual journal, inbox messaging, and other tools, family members can enjoy an all-inclusive means of communication shared privately between only those involved.
Keep a Care Journal
Having a care journal everyone has access to can be helpful for family members. Social media can be too public of a platform for some to share updates about your loved one, and if you’re like many, your cellphone is half a megabyte away from maxing out it’s storage space. Caregiving apps offer a virtual journal to keep a record of the care being provided so others can review the journal regularly. Keep relevant notes and even include images and attachments in your posts to share private updates such as a healing bruise from a fall.
Track Vitals and Coordinate Tasks
Caring for your aging loved one involves monitoring their vitals and their overall wellbeing. Many of these apps have preset tasks to track vitals such as blood pressure or measure their behavior, nutrition, and other activities. What if your loved one has a unique need? Simply setting an alarm on your phone doesn’t allow you to specify what the alarm is for.
A comprehensive caregiving app allows you to easily create custom tasks where all Care Team members can view and record data for your loved one. They can also receive real-time alerts to guarantee every task is completed on time so you no longer have to constantly remind others about their responsibilities.
Safely Administer Medications
As a caregiver, you are responsible for getting your loved one’s prescriptions filled and ensuring there are no negative drug interactions or side effects. Unless you’re a trained medical professional, you probably haven’t memorized every drug fact and the way it interacts with other medications. Luckily, a Medication Management tool can link directly to Medline Plus or other medication services, where you can view medication and supplement details such as drug interactions and side effects.
You can organize medications by entering the dosage, frequency taken, when to take it, and even what it looks like. Real-time reminders ensure your loved one will never miss a dose. Being able to mark a medication as taken helps avoid administering the same medication twice. Set refill reminders to notify you and your entire care team so your loved one will never run out of their vital medications.
Coordinate Schedules
With every device or email provider having a different calendar system, it’s difficult to keep everyone on the same page. Using a shared calendar makes coordinating your Care Team’s schedules, and Care Recipient needs simple. A shared calendar can organize appointments for your loved one and some can even assign participants for each event. You can also request a volunteer from your Care Team for a specific event. Reminders before appointments and the location saving feature ensure your loved one gets to their appointment efficiently and on time.
Analyze Irregularities
If there is a change in your loved one’s behavior or health, it can be difficult to pinpoint what exactly went wrong. Basic caregiving apps don’t allow you to analyze your loved one’s care needs. However, more advanced apps can provide analysis of behavior or health trends. For example, looking at graphed information generated from task and medication entries allows you to view irregularities and when they occurred. Or, being able to compare items can give you insight on factors such as how fluid intake affects your loved one’s pain levels or how a certain medication affects stool output. You can easily draw conclusions and improve your loved one’s care routine.
Families who coordinate caregiving responsibilities provide better care for their loved one and themselves. With a caregiver app by your side, it is easy to organize the care your loved one needs. Get the assurance you deserve and find out how a caregiving app can help you.
