Tl;dr: What can I do to mitigate the health risks posed by the multiple home health care aides who come to my elderly parents' home three times a day to assist my dad with ADLs?
I feel your pain, Lilibet--my wheelchair-bound father, who's 83, relies on home health care aides to help him with many ADLs (activities of daily living) because my mom, 72, is physically incapable of doing so due to asthma, obesity, and HBP). There are usually three different people there throughout the day (one comes from 8-12, another from 1-4, another from 5-8) as well as occasional visits from physical therapists, nurses, etc.
I really like and trust the vast majority of the folks who help my dad, and the agency they work for seems to do a pretty good job screening its employees, but there are a few that I suspect aren't going to take this seriously (people who have previously come to work with the sniffles, have a habit of touching their faces/putting their fingers in their mouths, etc.). Many of these folks are themselves 60+ years old, and some work second or even third jobs at nursing homes/care facilities that we all know are rife with various germs/viruses.
To be brutally honest, I do not expect that my parents, if infected with CV, would survive. And thinking about the number of vectors of disease they're exposed to IN THEIR OWN HOME, EVERY SINGLE DAY, has me paralyzed with fear. I don't know what to do, or to advise them to do--do I move back to my childhood home and (after quaratining myself for 14 days) try to handle my dad's care on my own (I'm 41, and in pretty good physical health), leaving my immunocompromised partner (and her elderly parents who live next door) to fend for themselves?
Do I ask the agency to avoid scheduling the folks with the questionable hygiene habits? Aside from insisting that all the aides wash their hands thoroughly when they arrive or that they wear latex gloves when they touch my dad and prepare his food, is there anything else I can do to mitigate the risk these carers pose?Ideally I'd like them to wear masks for the ADLs that require them to be in really close proximity to my dad (i.e. when he transfers from a wheelchair to a stationary recliner, the aide has to stand very close to him so that their heads are probably 10-12 inches apart at most) but I know how great the need is for masks right now for healthcare facility workers/EMTs, so I would not propose this.
This all may end up being a moot point, since I would not be surprised to hear that some of these home health aides are calling out/quitting to preserve their own health and well-being or because they have to care for their young children since there's no school for at least two weeks in PA (no judgement--I can understand making those decisions). But I would not be surprised if there comes a point in the not-too-distant future where intra-state travel restrictions mean that I'm going to have to either commit to moving home and becoming a caregiver until the crisis abates, or accept that I may not see my parents for several months and trusting that their aides will a) keep showing up b) practice good hygiene c) not come to work sick, which is why I'm considering it now.
