Choosing a nursing home for a loved one is a daunting task. Let Home Instead help make it easier.
For a reasonably healthy senior, a nursing home still is probably not the right choice. But for the senior who truly needs skilled medical care and intense supervision, a nursing home may be exactly the best place to live.
If your elderly parent or loved one – perhaps a mom, dad or aunt — is in the stage of senior care in which they need a nursing home in Sonoma County, there are a few things to remember when choosing one over another. The important thing is to do your research and homework to find the one that best suits your senior’s needs.
Here are 12 things to look for in choosing the right nursing home for your elderly parent or loved one in Sonoma County:
- Visit, observe, ask and try
- Check ratio of nurses and nursing assistants to residents
- Determine staff tenure and turnover
- Ask about physician availability: full-time or part-time?
- How close is the closest hospital?
- Review the most recent oversight-agency survey
- Look for activities offered by the facility
- Check the food by inviting yourself to meals
- Check exercise and entertainment offerings – do residents participate?
- Determine if speech and physical therapy services are offered
- Consider proximity to family
- Understand the cost and financing options
And don’t forget to ask people for referrals. At Home Instead Senior Care of Sonoma, we work with many senior care facilities including independent living, assisted living, retirement homes, retirement communities and nursing homes. Our caregivers provide non-medical care such as companionship services and individual transportation — those are things that nursing and medical care facilities don’t always provide.
Many of the best nursing homes in Sonoma County are staffed with teams of well-trained, professional registered and practical nurses as well as certified nursing assistants. In case of an emergency, physicians and psychiatrists are close at hand to deal with medical crises, which should give you and your family greater peace of mind. So nursing homes continue to serve a very important role on the spectrum or continuum of care for the elderly.
Keep in mind that when people are in a nursing home, companionship is the one thing that is often left out. Our Home Instead CAREGivers often visit our clients to reminisce about the past, to play their favorite game, to read an inspiring book to them and simply to be there on a regular basis when family cannot.
For a free, no-obligation home care consultation, simply call our home care Rohnert Park office at 707.586.1516. Or, if you’d like to view our digital brochure, you can do so at this link: Home Instead Sonoma Digital Brochure. We serve all of Sonoma County including Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Windsor and more.
And remember, “To us, it’s personal.”
