Maggie, a nurse question for you

Maggie K or anyone else who can help, here's the situation. I'm scheduled to leave town at the end of the month. My mom had surgery a few months ago and she's doing ok. But the incision site is still not fully healed and it needs dressing changes twice a day (something she cannot do herself). So...I need suggestions on what would be a cost effective way of dealing with this. We're talking about 20 minutes of work per day, and we have all the supplies. I called a home nurse service and was quoted a price of $45 per day. Any ideas?

Is there a neighbor/good friend/family member that could come over and you could show how to do the dressing changes and watch them do 1-2 changes to make sure they got it? Do you know any RNs personally that would be willing to do it for you? I know $45 a day sounds steep, but they have to pay for travel and 2 visits a day...sounds reasonable to me.

I agree that the 45.00 sounds reasonable. You also have to consider the possiblity of MRSA (an antibiotic resistant infection) if a wound is not healing. I would ask her doctor if the wound has been cultured for it. Has she been on antibotics? Have they been working? This may mean that you really need to have someone who can do the dressing change with some degree of skill and technique as to not contaminate self or others.

Does your mother belong to a church or other such organization? Sometimes they can be great resources for such thing. There is a new trend toward parish nursing in which large churches have a nurse on staff to care for members...things like this, flu shots and the like.

Just a thought. Hope this helps.

if she could get to the doctor's office, her medical copay is probably less than $45/day and she could just have them do it. if not, i agree with everyone else. see if you can pay a neighbor to do it for less or hire a professional.

We're meeting with the nurse on Tuesday. My guess is we're going to go with them. We made arrangements with my husband's parents to come down & stay with her on the weekend, so we do not have to use the nurse the full time we are gone.

Don't forget to ask about MRSA, it is important for you to know because of Joshua.
Take care.