Tips for Giving a Bed Bath as Part of Senior Care near Westfield, NJ
Giving a bed bath as a part of senior care can sometimes be considered an intimate act. Especially if you are providing this senior care service for a family member, it could potentially be an uncomfortable situation between you and your family member. For a spouse assisting their husband or wife, it is not likely as uncomfortable, but there are aspects of bathing somebody that can make others uncomfortable.
Before you even consider giving a loved one a bath, ask yourself a few questions. First, determine whether this situation is going to be uncomfortable for you. If you are uncomfortable with it, there really is no reason that you have to do this. You can hire a professional senior care service provider to come in and bathe your loved one. Of course, you want to make sure that your loved one approves of this option.
Second, you want to make sure that your loved one is going to be comfortable with the situation. Just because you may be comfortable with it, that doesn’t mean they are. Third, you want to be certain that you are doing an effective job helping to keep the individual clean. If you are skipping over certain areas, it can lead to discomfort, irritation, and even potentially pain.
If you and the elderly individual are comfortable with the situation, here are some tips for giving a bed bath.
- Keep plenty of extra towels on hand.
Even though you may assume that having two towels is enough, make sure that you have four. No matter how many towels you think are enough from the beginning, double that number to have on hand. This will keep you from having to run down the hall, to the bathroom, to grab more in the middle of the bath.
- Follow the rule of “wash clean to dirty.”
This means that you should focus on the cleaner parts of the body first. If the patient is lying in bed, start with the feet and move up. Move from the thighs to the hands, face, and neck. Then move back down over the torso and clean the perineal area last.
- Have two pans of water.
One pan should contain warm, soapy water and the other should have clean water to rinse in.
- Use mild soap.
Baby shampoo or other similar types of soap are good to use for a bed bath. You don’t want to irritate sensitive areas and this goes for the washcloth that you are using as well. Use a soft washcloth that is nonabrasive.
These are some helpful tips when giving a bed bath as a part of senior care.
If you or an aging loved one are considering hiring senior care services near Westfield NJ, call the caring staff at Helping Hands Home Care today at (908-418-4299)
Providing Home Care Services in all of Northern and Central NJ, including Clark, Westfield, Crawford, Scotch Plains, Rahway, Linden, Summit, Edison,Elizabeth, Mountainside and the surrounding areas.
After graduating from Seton Hall University with a BS in finance Helping Hands Homecare’s Owner / President, Robert D’Arienzo, went to work on Wall St. for six years. However, after Robert’s grandmother became ill with stomach cancer Robert and his family needed to find assistance in the home for her. After many trials and tribulations Robert could see that there was a great need for quality home care services here in NJ and loved the idea of being able to assist other families who were going through what his family went through with his beloved grandmother.
Thus, Robert had found his passion. After almost a year of preparation Robert opened Helping Hands Homecare in 2003. Robert wanted Helping Hands Homecare to focus on providing the highest quality of caregivers, exceptional customer service, and providing a service that familys could depend on in their time of need. Since then Helping Hands has assisted hundreds of individuals with the simplest of needs to more complex cases while preserving those standards set out many years ago.
Robert is a Google Verified Author
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