South Delta Leader
January 8, 2009
Home care
by Philip Raphael
Nurse Next Door offers services from companionship to medical care
Visiting family during the Christmas holidays is not exactly the most convenient time to suffer a broken hip.
But that’s unfortunately what happened to Winnipeg’s Tina Sawatsky, 88, who was in Tsawwassen to spend some time with her son, Jake Berger, and family.
She lost her balance and down she went. The next thing she knew Sawatsky found herself in hospital.
After getting treated and released from hospital the next problem was how to get the proper rehab care.
That’s when fate struck.
Berger was driving through town when he spied the colourfully decorated vehicles used by Nurse Next Door (www.nursenextdoor.com), a franchise which offers home-based care that can range from simple companionship to administering medical care from a registered nurse.
“I saw the car and wondered if this was a service that could help me because I’m not a trained health professional and didn’t know how to properly care for my mom once she was out of hospital,” Berger says.
So he contacted the father and daughter team of Brian Buckley and Lindsay Eldridge who started the Nurse Next Door service in Ladner and Tsawwassen about three months ago.
They assessed Sawatsky’s needs and assigned a caregiver to help her get mobile around her son’s home. And the results have been noticeable.
“Now my mom is able to get up and walk with the help of a walker and has regained much of her independence,” Berger says, adding he appreciates there is a local service which offers this type of specialised care. “It’s also been a real stress reducer because we have confidence in the fact mom is getting the right care.”
And that’s at the core of the service, says Buckley, adding the ability to get clients back into their home environment after hospital treatment is one of the big plusses.
“When people get back at home they are more comfortable, can get back into their own routines and tend to do better when they’re in a non-hospital envronment,” he says. “There’s a very positive feeling of being home.”
Buckley and Eldridge chose South Delta for their business partly based on demographics which showed them the area’s popualtion had 13 per cent who were 65 years and up.
But since opening for business they have also found clients who are on the other end of the age scale as well.
“We’ve had calls from much younger people, one who just had back surgery and needed some help with their rehab,” Eldridge says.
The service also offers repsite care for families with special needs children.
Aside from the physical care clients require, another big part of the service inlcudes simple companionship.
“Companionship is so important to people,” Buckley says. “We get plenty of calls from people with medical needs, but also from those who need that personal care—someone to simply spend some time with them.”
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