5 tips on taking care of older adults while socially distancing due to coronavirus

March 30, 2020

Older adults are the most vulnerable group when it comes to disease COVID-19. But many of them still need home care agencies and professional or family caregivers to support them. Elder care companies must act to keep their employees and care recipients safe. Read 5 tips on how to protect the elderly from coronavirus.

1. Hygiene comes first

Very good personal hygiene means no chance of coronavirus. But don’t forget - it applies to everyone, not only to caregivers.

Follow these steps:

Wash hands often and very properly. See picture instructions from the World Health Organisation.
Disinfect everything you touch as much as possible, wear a face mask and gloves and reduce contact with people.
Cough or sneeze to tissues, elbow or clothes.
Do not touch your face, the virus can penetrate the body through all membranes, even through the eyes.

Minimize personal visits by video chat during Coronavirus outbreak

Professional caregivers

home care agencies, assisted living facilities and other eldercare companies get the Oscar Senior remote care platform for 1 month free of charge – it is ready to be used within 3 days

Family caregivers

download the Oscar Family app in App Store or Google Play to stay in touch with and provide care remotely to your elderly – used to be 7 days free of charge, now it is free for 1 month

2. Practice social distancing

Push your elderly to say no to visits from outside. Regardless of whether people feel good, COVID-19 is often asymptomatic. Limit the visits to your older family members or clients. And if they are necessary, a face mask is a must-wear.

What about supplies? Bet on delivery services. If you buy food yourself, leave the bags in front of the seniors’ door and keep a safe distance of 2 meters at least.

Tip for families: Seniors may feel alone in these times. Make a smile on their faces with a little gesture – order flower delivery service or send them a video message from their grandchildren which they can watch whenever they feel sad.

1,500. This is the number of bacteria living on each square centimetre of our hands. Do not forget to wash your hands properly even after the coronavirus pandemic.

3. Set the outbreak rules

Respecting each other. This is how we beat a pandemic of this type. Unfortunately, in many cases people are infectious, but they don't know about it. Therefore, think about your health and the health of others, don’t stay outside and follow the government statements.

As a care provider you need to protect your facility and elderly clients from COVID-19.

Make sure to set the rules:

Caregivers have to use face masks and gloves.
Confirmed or possible infected should stay in a single room.
Ventilate frequently and do not use air conditioning.
Reduce the number of people in rooms to 10 maximally.
People returning home from other countries should stay in home quarantine for 20 days at least.
Reduce personal visits to necessary minimum. Whenever possible communicate with the care recipient online via video chat or messages.

Perhaps your care recipients are unaware of the potential risks or don’t know how to search information. Explain coronavirus situation to them gently.

Help older adults do deal with lack of contact in times of social distancing. Inform them, provide support and other services such as ordering groceries – all with the help of Oscar Senior remote care platform.

4. Stay in (online) touch with seniors

Coronavirus has turned our planet into one big online world. But that doesn't mean that elderly who are not that tech-savvy will be left out. Show them they can do it. There are very good senior-friendly software and apps you can introduce them.

We know that loneliness (especially in these times) can be very stressful for seniors. We understand that you want to protect the elderly and yourself and minimize personal visits. However, do you want to hear the good news?

We decided to give you Oscar Senior platform free of charge for 1 month.

With Oscar Senior you can:

communicate with care recipients via video calls
help senior immediately when necessary
monitor care recipients and manage their meds remotely
ensure services such as ordering groceries delivery

Learn more about Oscar Senior

5. Minimize personal check-ups

If the senior doesn’t feel bad, consider canceling personal visits. Instead schedule daily video call with each care recipient to check up on them and to prevent feelings of loneliness, isolation or even depression.

We know from the experience of our customers that video chat and remote care via Oscar Senior can fully replace personal visits for quite some time. Moreover, Oscar Senior will allow you to provide even better and more frequent support as it enables caregivers to care remotely without time-consuming travel.

Did you know, that...

... 19% or caregiver's time is spent on travelling to check-up on care recipients while 20% of visits last only up to 15 minutes? That is incredibly inefficient and it shows that most of such visits aren't actually important and necessary. Replace such visits with video chat and other remote care tools to increase effectivity of your facility. Especially in times of social distancing you need your caregivers to spend their time wisely.

We all can contribute to stopping the disease from spreading. We are in this together and together we can make it. Stay safe, folks.