Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH

Practical advice to help caregivers help aging adults

Medical caregiving for elderly

Choosing & using a home blood pressure monitor, & what to ask the doctor

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In my last post, I wrote about some of the key reasons that I recommend older adults and their caregivers have a blood pressure (BP) monitor at home.

To very briefly recap:

  • Many of the problems of older adults (including falls) can be related to blood pressure.
  • Home blood pressure measurements can help:
    • evaluate for drops in blood pressure with standing (a common cause of dizziness in elders)
    • check for serious illness, since these often (but not always) cause the blood pressure and pulse to be very different from usual
    • follow-up on blood pressure after a change in medication, which can help doctors and families figure out the best medication dosing for an older person much faster. This is safer for elderly people.

In this post, I’ll share some tips on choosing and using a home BP monitor. (And don’t worry, I won’t tell you that you have to plan on checking every day for the rest of your lives…although there are times when it’s great to check daily — like the week after a change in medication — the most important thing is to have a good BP monitor at home and know how to use it at least occasionally.)

Tips for choosing a home blood pressure monitor

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Why I love home blood pressure monitors

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If I had to recommend one key piece of healthcare equipment that elders & caregivers should have at home, it would be this: a good home blood pressure (BP) machine.

Why? Because blood pressure measurements (and pulse measurements, which machines check at the same time) are an incredibly useful tool when it comes to assessing and optimizing an older person’s health and wellbeing. This is true even for those older people who aren’t being treated for hypertension (chronic high BP).

As I’d love for more elders and caregivers to understand how home BP machines can help them, in this post I’ll explain how home BP machines can be helpful specifically for older adults. Then in the next post, I’ll offer a few thoughts as to how to go about choosing one and using it.

How a home blood pressure monitor comes in handy

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Tools for Caregivers: How to Manage Tasks & To-dos

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This post is the fourth and final post in a series describing the four key types of tools that I recommended to caregivers at a retreat earlier this summer.

Just to recap, the key tools I recommended included a journal/notebook, a portable and up-to-date medication list, an organizer to keep copies of medical results (also known as a “personal health record”), and last but not least, a personal or family task organizer.

In this post, I’ll explain why I believe most caregivers can benefit from using some kind of task organizer in order to keep track of the to-dos related to an older person’s medical care. I’ve also tried some of the task management tools that are available, and will write about a few that caregivers may want to try.

Why I recommend task organizers to caregivers

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Tools for caregivers: Keeping & Organizing Medical Information

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This post is part 3 of a series describing the four key types of tools that I recommended to caregivers at a retreat earlier this summer:

  • Journal/notebook, for notes and symptom tracking (see this post for details)
  • Portable and up-to-date medication list (see this post for details)
  • Organizer to keep copies of medical results and medical records
  • Personal/family task organizer

In this post, I’ll explain why it’s important to keep copies of medical results and key medical records. I’ll then explain which kinds of medical information is most useful to keep, and I’ll describe a few ways that caregivers can do this.

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Tools for Caregivers: the Portable & Up-to-date Medication List

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At a recent retreat for family caregivers, I proposed four key tools that I recommend to caregivers who want to improve the healthcare of an older person:

  • Journal/notebook, for notes and symptom tracking (see last week’s post for more details)
  • Portable and up-to-date medication list
  • Organizer to keep copies of medical results and medical records
  • Personal/family task organizer

In this post, I’ll explain why I always recommend caregivers make an effort to maintain a portable and up-to-date medication list. Then I’ll discuss some tech tools that caregivers can consider.

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