Nursing Knowledge Basics You Can Apply At Home

The nursing profession is quite a noble one. You get to help people get better; what could be more satisfying than that? In fact, you can also help the people at your home with some very basic nursing knowledge. The opportunity to help your loved ones with their health conditions, and to make them feel better is quite an amazing feeling. As a nurse, here are a few basic things that you can apply at home.

Creating A Suitable Dietary Plan

Being a nurse, you have to make sure that your patients are maintaining a proper dietary routine. You can apply the same thing at your home as well. As a member of the family, you’ll have a good idea regarding the health conditions of your other members. And as a nurse, you’ll be able to create suitable dietary plans for all of them. 

For instance, if someone in the family is suffering from diabetes, you’ll make sure that their diet contains little to no sugar. And if someone is suffering from kidney diseases, you’ll make sure that they’re getting plenty of drinking water.

And your duty doesn’t just end here. After you’re done creating the dietary plans, you should enforce them as well. Make sure each member abides by them.

Ensuring Healthy Living Conditions

Hospitals always tend to maintain a healthy environment for their patients. And the ones to ensure such healthy living conditions are the nurses. Nurses will make sure that everything inside the patient’s room is suitable for them. From the temperature of the room to the way it smells, all of it needs to help the patient feel better.

At home, you can do the same. If someone in your family has a fever, you should help them get comfortable in their rooms. Set their room temperature to an optimum level, and if they’re feeling too cold, get a room heater for them.

Ensuring healthy living conditions also means that you have to make sure that they’re getting access to fresh air and sunlight every day. It’s also important that you restrict outsiders to frequent their room, or stay for a long time with them in the same place.

Conducting Basic Checkups And Tests

Whether you’re a registered nurse or just a trainee, there are a few medical tests and checkups that you can easily conduct. They’re very easy to do, and the equipment needed to carry them out is readily available in the market. 

Some of these tests and checks include –

  • Temperature check: Just pop-in a thermometer in the patient’s mouth and take the reading. There are digital ones available in the market that make things a lot easier now.
  • Checking the blood pressure: Digital blood pressure machines are available for this purpose as well.
  • Checking the sugar level: You can simply use a diabetic kit to do this within a few minutes.

Apart from all this, you can also help them with their body aches, check for allergies, and observe whether they’re having breathing problems or not.

Keeping Track Of Daily Medication

Just like you’d help your family members maintain a healthy diet, you should also help them keep track of their daily medication. 

People often forget to take their prescriptions on time, especially the elderly. As a nurse, it’s your responsibility to remind them about their doses. Of course, it’s impossible to always be there to remind them about their medication. So what you can do is give them a call when it’s time to take the drugs or set up an alarm to remind them about it. You could even install medication reminder apps on their phones that’ll basically do the job for you.

You’ll also have to keep track of any changes in their prescriptions and inform them accordingly.

In times of a health crisis or an emergency, your family will turn towards you with all sorts of questions. And they expect you to answer each of them. Of course, you might not know the answers to all of them, yet, you should try to help them out.

You can do so by going through your notes or textbooks. You could even look them up online. These days, you can get all your nursing answers from professionals or practitioners like yourself. They usually provide their services to trainee nurses and students. If needed, they’ll help you out as well.

Besides all this, another key responsibility you’ll have is to provide emotional support to your family members. It’s a very basic nursing practice and yet, one of the most crucial ones. Just be there for them, and make sure that they don’t stress themselves out while worrying too much about their health.

Julie Higgins
Author
Julie is a Staff Writer at momooze.com. She has been working in publishing houses before joining the editorial team at momooze. Julie's love and passion are topics around beauty, lifestyle, hair and nails.