Unit 1- Effective Caring Revision

1. Physical Life Quality
Factors

2. Exercise
 Most people feel better after taking
exercise
 Regular exercise has important long-term
health benefits
 Some clients or patients have limited
opportunity to take part in exercise, e.g.
due to advanced age and physical frailty,
disability or disease

3.  Effective caring should incorporate some
physical exercise, e.g.
 Simple chair exercises if a person is chair-
bound, for example in a residential care
home
 Walking is a good exercise for everyone
(even students!)

4. Nutrition
 Nutrition contributes to the quality of life in
a number of ways:
 People need a balanced diet in order to
remain healthy
 In health and social care setting examples
of the need for balanced diets include:
people with diabetes or pregnant women

5.  Good nutrition depends on varied and
appetising food – eating well gives us a feel-
good factor and therefore improves our quality
of life
 It is important not to exceed the energy intake
required for our needs as this could result in
obesity and all the problems associated with
obesity such as diabetes, heart disease or
stroke.

6. Physical safety
 Physical safety refers to the absence of
serious risk of injury
 Health and social care settings carry out
risk assessments of the environment and
then make adjustments to remove or
minimise any identified risk.

7.  Care home owners are required to have
covers on radiators. They are also
required to have safety catches on
windows, especially upstairs windows, and
to ensure hot water temperatures are
controlled by thermostats

8.  Schools are also required to do risk
assessments. When taking pupils on
school trips someone has to assess any
risk arising from travel or from the
destination, e.g. is the bus fitted with
safety belts? Is the play area safe?

9. Hygiene
 Hygiene means the absence of serious
risk of infection.
 All health and social care settings and
care workers must be extremely conscious
of the need for good hygiene.
 Hospital staff are required to wash their
hands when moving from patient to
patient.

10.  Poor standards of hygiene can lead to
infections such as MRSA (the hospital
‘super bug’. This can lead to delayed
wound healing and has been the cause of
many deaths in hospitals around the
country

11.  Poor hygiene in catering establishments
such as care home kitchens can lead to
an outbreak of food poisoning.

12. Physical comfort
 Physical comfort means the absence of
excessive cold, heat or unpleasant
stimulation
 Living in a cold damp atmosphere is not a
comfortable experience nor is living in an
environment without adequate ventilation.

13.  Excessive stimulation might be a noisy
environment such as having the TV on too
loud and/or for long periods of time in a
care environment such as a residential
home

14.  Another example of unpleasant and
excessive stimulation can be irritated skin.
Itchiness is very unpleasant (though
scratching an itch………?)

15.  Physical comfort is particularly important
in health and social care settings where
clients are unable to control their own
environment
 A baby who is left in a wet and dirty nappy
for too long will experience some degree
of discomfort. The baby can’t do anything
to reduce this and needs a carer to do it
for him

16. Freedom from pain
 Clients and patients sometimes
experience pain as a result of their health
condition
 This could be people with heart disease,
cancer or arthritis amongst many other
conditions

17.  Frequent or continuous pain can seriously
affect a person’s quality of life.
 It is essential that effective care is
provided to control or relieve pain