Hi everyone.
Bit of a rant ahead, Just curious if anyone has this shared experience with housebound people and getting home visits from doctors/district nurses/etc?
I find myself increasingly more and more frustrated by how home visits are run. From what I’ve experienced, there is a distinct lack of understanding for patients needs and especially the carer’s in how they’re arranged/carried out.
For example both myself and my partner care for elderly and disabled relatives, and they’re overdue their flu jabs which should have been done weeks ago, but despite desperately trying for six weeks to pin someone down to a ballpark idea of when the nurse will call to do them, we’re just repeatedly told “they’ll come when they can.” That probably works fine for most people, but fortunately not for us.
One of our carees is unable to reliably mobilize independently and some days can’t get out of a chair without assistance to answer the door by themselves. Another has learning difficulties/mental health issues and they simply will not answer the door unless they know the person calling personally and is aware/prepared in advance for them to call. Since we’re family carers we don’t have key safes etc.
Also, none of our carees are keen on having DN’s into the house to carry out the jabs this year, and would rather have them outside instead, but getting people with limited mobility out of their front doors isn’t simple and takes efforts that the DNs don’t ever seem to have time for.
All this essentially makes us as the carers prisoners in our/their homes. I understand pressures and demands are high and DNs fly by the seat of their pants most of the time, and it’s a busy time of year but it’s like this every single time our carees need to be seen at home by a doctor/DN.
A little consideration for the carer would go a long way.
Fortunately, our carees aren’t left alone for more than a couple of hours at any one time, and those couple of hours are essential for us to get out and run errands/shop etc. However for the foreseeable future we’re to be stuck waiting between 8am and 6pm to see if the DN’s appear on any given day.
A quick call to say they’re on route would work wonders, or even a rough idea of the day and time, AM or PM would help, but we get absolutely nothing. We’re just expected to sit waiting to facilitate the visit and for them to drop by whenever they can fit the caree in.
At this time of year especially, when there’s so much to get done, I feel it’s really unfair to show no consideration for the carers who have to fit their lives are the needs of the caree.
And ultimately, a call would take a few minute tops! Driving out to visit and finding the caree unable to answer to door due to lack of carer presence/support is a waste of everyone’s time!
The caree is housebound, the carer shouldn’t have to be too!
Is it really too much to ask to be given a rough idea of what date and time you’ll be needed?