One of the scarier feelings in life is a loss of control of your own body. While that can mean things like getting a disease that leaves you unable to walk long distances, it can also refer to the tendency of family and care personnel at a nursing home to suddenly decide what you'll do whether you want to or not. If your relative has entered a nursing home and has health conditions that need care, you may find that the home's staff wants to set up a care plan. This is meant to better coordinate care and try to keep the relative out of the hospital. Involve your relative in the planning, even if you have power of attorney. Remember that this is their life and body you're dealing with, and they will want — and deserve — a say in what happens.

Keep Your Relative as Involved as Possible, and Listen to Them

If your relative is still mentally able to handle at least some of their own life, include them fully in the care plan design. No one wants to suddenly be whisked off to this or that therapy or doctor and ordered to do something. Discussing the plan with your relative allows them to exercise their patient rights and ensure that they understand why you and the nursing home staff want them to do something.

Get to the Bottom of Disputes Between Your Relative and Staff

It's easy to dismiss complaints about the staff as the grumblings of a grumpy relative. But sometimes, it's not. Sometimes these are signs of an actual dispute that needs to be mediated. Maybe the staff member is careless and treats the relative like a child when the relative's mental capacity is still completely there and working. Maybe the relative misunderstood part of the care plan. Listen to the grumblings and research them so that you can solve the problem.

Work with Staff to Find the Best Combination of Interest and Necessity

If the care plan for your relative is very restrictive, you and the home staff are going to have to find something, anything, that the relative finds interesting and that can make them feel better about having to go through the care plan. If nothing is interesting and nothing makes the relative feel like there is a purpose to following through with the care plan, then the relative isn't going to be cooperative. You'll hear more complaints, and as understandable as those are, you're still not going to want to deal with them. But if you find a benefit to the care plan that the relative can see or feel, or otherwise find worthy of all the annoyance of the plan, that increases compliance. A very restrictive, bland diet can be horrible for a foodie who wants spicy food, but if you can remind the relative that the bland diet actually made them feel better last week, then they may be a little more understanding and less likely to try to sneak in forbidden foods.

It can be a relief when the care plan that is supposed to keep your relative out of the hospital shows signs of working. If you keep your relative involved and don't try to take over their life, it will be easier to put the care plan into motion. Reach out to a service like Affinialcare to find out more.