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Caring for the bedridden involves a lot of hard work, time and effort, which is why most people delegate the task to qualified nurses or nurse practitioners who come highly recommended from local hospitals or other healthcare settings. There are aspects to the task that only professional caregivers who are naturally endowed with the necessary patience and skills are able to satisfy.
When someone is confined to bed for a prolonged period of time because of an illness or a disability, the first thing that the person needs is compassion. They are at the mercy of someone for even the smallest things, so the nurse or caregiver in charge should take the effort to let them do things on their own as much as possible.
A sense of independence is most valuable to someone who is bedridden, so placing a table near the bed where ordinary things like a phone, newspapers, books, pens and pencils, writing materials, glasses, water and other necessities can be reached easily is of utmost importance.
Allow the patient to feed himself/herself if they are able to sit propped up in bed. Provide them with napkins and the required cutlery so that they are able to eat in comfort.
If the patient asks for a change of bed linen and sheets, accommodate their request without arguing that they were changed only that morning or recently. The comfort of the patient is most important when they’re constantly lying in bed.
Just because they are bedridden, there’s no need for them to look shabby. So help them dress well and look good even though they’re not going anywhere. A little makeup and a daily shave will do wonders for patients’ morale.
Provide them with some form of entertainment, books or television or papers, if they are able to sit up for some period of time.
Caregivers must ensure that they make quality time for themselves too in order to avoid burnout or job fatigue. A day off is the best way to recharge and rejuvenate so that you’re back and able to take care of the tasks at hand with the energy they deserve.
This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who writes on the subject of Cruise Nursing. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.
My second semester was very exciting because we FINALLY got to do clinicals in a real hospital. I had a fantastic instructor who encouraged learning, did not make you feel like an idiot, was kind and gentle, yet expected nothing less than excellence (or at least that you tried your very best). No doubt she was called to be a teacher.
I am honestly having a hard time remembering my first patient in the hospital, but do remember it being the first time that I would have to try and get someone on a bedpan by myself. In the nursing home, we teamed up a lot to work faster. But now, we had to learn to manage our time as well. It took me around an hour to get this poor person on the bedpan, wait for them to finish, and get them off and clean them. And guess what?? It spilled. So, now, after making a bed on a bedridden patient, I had to do it all over again. It was horrible. I kept thinking, “This is NOT what I signed up to do”. It was not until later that I truly learned how important it was to know everything from the ground up about skills and how to care for a patient because I would certainly be training, delegating, and evaluating those who were also going to be doing these things.
I think my most stressful day at clinical in the nursing home was near the end of my rotation. We FINALLY had a resident who needed a catheter changed. She had an indwelling foley catheter and was bedridden. A very nice lady who was more than willing to have students learn at her expense. Our instructor had us huddle together and asked who wanted to change the catheter. Nobody volunteered. Honestly, this was primarily because we were told that if we did a skill improperly, we would possibly fail. So, the obvious choice was just to never perform skills for as long as no one caught on, and then just learn them once we graduated, when we weren’t getting a grade for it. Okay, so this is a rather stupid idea, but it did run through our heads. I mean, wouldn’t it make sense to provide a more conducive environment for learning, rather than one that was motivated only by fear of failing. We were frequently so afraid that we just went blank many times, simply from fear.
There was a lot of opportunity for practice on a dummy in the nursing skills lab. All of your catheter supplies came in this nice kit so it was easy for you to maintain sterile technique and get it all down pat. But let me tell you, it is NOTHING like putting it in a real person. First of all, women are FAR harder to insert a catheter in than a man is. (That is, unless the man has an enlarged prostate and then you continue to meet resistance and the catheter coils within him. Ouch!) So, this one poor girl, we’ll call Hope, was selected. The instructor stated that she’d be back in 15 minutes and asked Hope to review her skills and collect her supplies and they would meet in the room. Hope began frantically reviewing the procedure and then went to the supply room. Poor thing, I was just as overwhelmed as she was. Okay, so you look for “catheter kit”, right? At least that’s what they had in our skills lab. Well, this nursing home was being rather cost effective and decided it was much cheaper to not only use a different company that sold catheter supplies, but to also buy each piece separately. You had to also remember exactly what all was in that so easy and wonderful catheter kit that they didn’t have there. So, you choose what size French catheter you want. You mean there’s a difference? Uhm, maybe the size in the middle? Okay, a 14 french sounds good. (No idea what the difference is between it and the others except it looks a little bigger.) Now, you get to (without wasting) decide how many times you’re going to screw up, so you’ll want to get that many catheters. Now you have to pick out a bag. Do you want a regular foley bag, a leg bag, or a bag with a urometer? Uh, not sure she looked beforehand, so we’ll go with a regular foley bag. Okay, we need sterile gloves, and a few pair in case you mess up. Okay, choose a size. I have no idea what size I wear, and Hope didn’t either, because the kit comes with a one size fits all. Again, she just picked one of the middle range sizes—Hope looked like she had average hands, anyway. Were we forgetting anything? Yes!! We needed some sort of cleanser to clean the lady with before inserting the catheter. They didn’t have those super nice prepackaged betadine swabs like we were used to. We only saw this bottle of betadine that was big enough to put in fifty catheters. Were we allowed to take that into the room? Well, it was all we could find; so we took it. But what were we gonna clean her with? This stumped us. There were none of those gigantic cotton swabs like we’d previously used. Maybe some sterile gauze? Grabbed it and took off.
We met the instructor in the room. She stands there waiting for poor Hope to begin. The lady resident was so sweet and let our entire group of seven students watch as Hope began to shake just opening the packages. She opened them out of order (not being used to doing it this way), the catheter size was incorrect, and the gloves were too small. We were not allowed to take the betadine container into the room because it was now considered “contaminated” and we had to waste it all after using it. Apparently, we were supposed to get a sterile urine specimen container and pour it into that and that could be brought into the room. We forgot a chucks pad to put under her bottom so as not to stain her bed and mattress. What a nightmare!!
Okay, so after correcting all of this, Hope began. One student held a flashlight shining on the woman’s private parts as seven students and one instructor all watched. Uh, where’s the hole? We were all looking at the instructor and Hope wondering what in the hell you do when you can’t find the hole! She had a bladder and uterus that had dropped which severely complicated things. Uh, well, finally she found a hole, so she inserted it. No urine flowed back into the tube. Okay, so was her bladder simply empty, or had she stuck it into the wrong hole? We learned that she had stuck it into her vagina instead. She left it in the wrong hole and began to search for the correct one. So, we remembered this trick where you ask the patient to “bear down” like there gonna pee (praying they don’t pee in your face). When they do, the urethra “winks” at you, and for a brief moment you see it open. Well, it worked!!! We saw it, and poor Hope made a second attempt. She kept pushing it up into her and she struck gold!! Urine, that is. The entire group applauded. It was kind of comical. The poor lady resident was trying to give Hope all kind of tips, but none of them were remotely applicable. But the resident felt she had just given the group the greatest experience of our lives. She was so proud she helped.
That was one heck of an hour on one of our last days. I can still see this scene in my head. 
