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Belpre St. Marks Healthcare Ministry


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Written: 10/26/2009

 

 

By Irene Atwater

Parish Nurse

Belpre St Marks UMC

 

At Belpre St Marks, our team does Blood Pressures, educational information, coordinates with senior center educational opportunities and exercise classes, provides a grief bags to families who have had a death, give home visits to shut-ins, hospital and Nursing Home visits and follow-up after hospitalizations.

  

One of the most in-depth work I did was with a person with a blood discrasia that was having multiple admissions to the hospital for blood transfusions because of not following up on discharge plans.  She was not following up with Dr. visits or going for her infusions of Procrit, which she needed on a regular basis. She was also not filling prescriptions.

 

It was several visits before she would let me see her discharge papers from the hospital. After I took her a few times for her infusions and she knew where she was to go she started going on her own. With her permission, when she went to the hospital she let me in on her discharge instructions and helped her with follow-up. She also let me go to the Dr. with her. Her hospital admissions almost stopped. She became a diabetic and I did follow-up teaching and followed to see that she did her blood sugars.

 

At one time she was losing her ability to walk and I helped with her admission to the rehabilitation center from home. She lived in an apartment with her bathroom upstairs so I also helped her fill out papers for her to move into Senior housing.  This took a lot of talking as she was afraid of cost until she found out her income was so low that it cost her almost nothing. Her only child lived out of area and they were not communicating  with each other. She had a nephew in the area that was willing to help her with paper work and do things for her but she would not let him help as ''he has too many responsibilities with his own mother" so she was reluctant to ask him to help.

 

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