Communication and Assisting Service Users

How to communicate and assist service users on how to do what they can not do After the handing over, we are assigned to service users in other to support them with their personal care needs. In the morning, i knock at the service users doors and say morning to prepare them to get ready for a wash. For those that are unable to have access to toilet facilities, i apply a manual handling by supporting them in movement from the bed to the toilet by using hoist or wheelchair which must be in good standard and for those who are able; I make sure they use the toilet.

Communication comes in many ways, you can communicate with service users verbally, body language or eye to eye contact. The process of care and communication to provide a good care is something which should be carefully planned to meant to be helping the service user, it is very important to know the well being response to individual needs to provide right care that the service user benefit from and contribute to overall improvement in care plan.

So after providing the help for those who are able and unable to help themselves, I then give report in the hand over book to enable the staff taking over from me knows where problems are and how resident have been and what they need. This is where communication comes in, to instruct somebody to do something verbally or through hand written in the hand over book or care plan.

During the process of personal care, some of the service users are very aggressive or they have a challenging behaviour response to the service you are rendering to them, you calm them down or go away for some minutes and then come back to them and make sure all these is written in the hand over book or your care plan for the staff to know what is happening and how to go about it.

I also communicate with the service users while giving them a wash, i ask them if they had good sleep and also ask them for the colour or type of cloth he or she would like to wear. After washing and dressing up, i take the resident to where he or she will sit for his or her breakfast. When is coming to food, every resident own identity to what they like or dislike. By following these, individual needs are met and these promote the well being of service user.

That is open flexible approach. When dealing with service user’s food, the first thing you do is to wash your hand, make sure the area is clean, don’t forget to get your apron on and make sure you get to the service user according to their needs and you must write everything in the care plan or hand over book, how the service user ate and drink to enable the staff the well being of the service user.

After all these, the activities of the day begins, some like watching television, playing ball, games, i even assist them in reading news papers and also chart with them. At the end of the day, I give reports on what has happen during the shift, things that need to be extra vigilant about and how the residents are generally in the book of hand over and care plan.