Guidance needed to Eritrean home therapy patient

[AngelKissed857, BSN, RN]

Hi all,

I'm hoping for any tips in working well and respectfully with an Eritrean family. Parents are very traditional, large family group at every training which is quite exhausting. I can deal with that. But my biggest concern is not having the patient treated by family as a bed-bound invalid. Any experience based thoughts are welcome! Haven't been able to find much online that is helpful. Lovely and caring family-want to give them my best.

[GapRN]

I'm not sure what you mean by not treating pt as bed-bound, but changing pt/CG behavior is done through age appropriate education. Try telling my 3 y/o to brush her teeth cuz she should! Instead of story time one night I taught her germ theory and showed her pictures on my phone of all the animals that live in her mouth and eat up her teeth. Now she brushes her teeth cuz "Daddy we have to get rid of the animals!"

Teach fall risk - explain the Missouri scale and statistics. about 95% of my patients never fell before except for that one freak accident, and then yeah it happened again but... Explain pressure ulcer risk (why HD increases it) show pics of pressure ulcers. Is it a question of not accepting a recent decline? this can be difficult but maybe tell them it's a good idea to get in the habit of certain practices "because in my experience decline is common with conditions x, y & z and may even be slowed/prevented by interventions a, b &c."