Five Tips for Helping a Family Member in the Hospital

Posted by Jacob Goldstein in the Wall Street Journal Health blog Family members, long relegated to visiting hours and waiting rooms, are increasingly getting to see behind the curtain at hospitals. Many facilities are giving patients’ families better access to the patient’s room, and some are even involving family members by having nurses ask for their observations and give them end-of-shift updates, the WSJ reports.

Here are a few tips for taking care of a loved one in the hospital:

1. Ask everyone if they’ve washed their hands.
2. Ask nurses to read drug orders out loud and confirm that they match the patient’s ID bracelet.
3. If it’s a new medication, ask what it’s for and what to expect.
4. During long stays, be alert for bedsores. Make sure the patient is moved often, and lifted rather than slid.
5. Don’t try and help the patient into or out of bed by yourself.
6. Don’t give the patient medications on your own.

In general, try to take a balanced approach. On the one hand, it’s good to stay informed about what’s happening and speak up if you think something is wrong. On the other hand, as WSJ columnist Dr. Ben Brewer recently noted, overly confrontational family members can wind up goading staff into unnecessary treatments, which can mean “extra doses of radiation from scans, the extra medication [the patient] might be allergic to, and the extra procedures the specialist is likely to recommend.”