If you are asking what a caregiver does the first week after hospital discharge, the honest answer is a different job every day. This page is the week as a strip, Day 1 to Day 7: what tends to happen, what to write down, and where the week usually cracks. It is a map.
Day 1. The car pulls in.
The first hour is the walk from the car to the bed. Do it slowly, with the walker, with you on the side she leans to. Then the first bathroom trip, which tells you more about the week than anything the planner said. Then the papers: the written discharge instructions the checklist told you to ask for in a form you can read and understand, clipped to the fridge, and the names and phone numbers of people to call if you have questions or concerns on the sheet above them.
The first night is the first real test. If you did the setup list, the night lights are in and the walker is on the right side of the bed. Be in earshot, or have someone else who is. If nobody can be in the house tonight, that is the block to have hired before today, and the 168-hour grid is where you work it out.
Day 2. The phone starts.
Day 2 is phone calls. The pharmacy, if you did not get there on Day 0. The home health agency, if home health was ordered, calling to schedule the first visit. Your job today is to answer every unknown number, and to write down what each caller says they will do and when.
Expect the first home health visit to be short and scheduled. That is how Medicare designs it: part-time or intermittent skilled services, in most cases up to 8 hours a day and 28 hours a week combined at the very most. A visit is not a shift. If you have been counting on "home health" to be presence, Day 2 is when that becomes clear, and the page on home health versus home care is the one to read tonight.
Sources: Medicare, Your Discharge Planning Checklist; Medicare.gov, Home health services. Opened September 10, 2026.
What if the home health aide does not show the first morning?
Call the agency, not the hospital. The number is on the paperwork the agency gave you on Day 2, or on the fridge sheet if you wrote it there. Ask for the scheduled time in writing, by text or email, so that the next miss has a record. Then cover the morning yourself or with the person you hired. Do not leave her waiting on the edge of the bed for a visit that might not come. If the visit was for something clinical, a dressing, an injection, call the number on the discharge instructions and ask what to do in the meantime. That is the care team's question, not yours.
Day 3. The 72-hour wall.
By Day 3 the hospital adrenaline is gone and you have not slept. This is where the week cracks. The National Institute on Aging says caregivers are less likely than others to get preventive health services and tend to have a higher risk of physical and mental health issues, sleep problems and chronic conditions such as high blood pressure. That is a description of the job, not of you. Count the overnights you have personally held. If you have not slept, that is the moment to use the respite the NIA describes, even for one night. The NIA describes respite care as short-term relief for primary caregivers, lasting anywhere from a few hours to several weeks, at home or elsewhere. Then make the call you have been putting off for the overnights next week.
Sources: NIA, Taking Care of Yourself: Tips for Caregivers; NIA, What Is Respite Care? Opened September 10, 2026.
Day 4. The first shower, and the first follow-up.
The discharge papers usually name a first follow-up. Put the date on the fridge sheet the checklist already told you to fill, and plan two people for the ride if you can: one to drive, one to sit with her. Bring the fridge sheet, the drug list the staff reviewed, and the log. The checklist says to bring your discharge information and drug list to your follow-up appointments. The first shower at home is also a task for this stretch of the week. Chair in the shower, a person in the room, towels within reach, nobody in a hurry.
Day 5 and Day 6. The routine, and the family meeting.
By Day 5 there is a shape to the day: when she wakes, when she eats, when the tablets in her box are due. Write it down. That is the first draft of the routine anyone you hire will follow. Day 6 is the family meeting, even if it is a phone call. Put the grid on the table. Say the hours you have held this week out loud. Ask who takes which block next week. The Family Caregiver Alliance's guide is useful before that meeting, for the section on a parent who does not want a stranger in the house.
Sources: Medicare, Your Discharge Planning Checklist; Family Caregiver Alliance, Hiring In-Home Help. Opened September 10, 2026.
Day 7. One week home.
Look back at the grid and mark the cells that were hard. Those are the cells to change for week two. Then do the two-minute audit: are the night lights still on, is the walker still on the right side of the bed, is the fridge sheet still current, has any number on it changed? A week is long enough for the house to drift.
What to write down for the care team
Keep one log for the week, on paper, in the kitchen. Not a medical chart. One line per day, written so a nurse can read it in thirty seconds:
- How she slept, and how many times she was up.
- What she ate and drank, roughly.
- Bathroom trips, and whether she needed a hand.
- How far she walked, and whether she used the walker.
- Anything new since yesterday, with the time you noticed it.
- Any call you made, who you spoke to, and what they said.
The log is for describing, not deciding. If a line in it worries you, the number on the discharge instructions is the one to call. The checklist tells you to ask, before she leaves, about complications to watch for and what to do about them; the answer to that question is what the log is checked against, and it came from the care team, not from this page.
She fell again on Day 2. What now?
Call the number on the discharge instructions, or 911 if the instructions or your own eyes say so. That is the whole answer, and it is deliberately short, because this page will not tell you what a fall means. What the public sources say is that more than one in four people 65 and older fall each year, and that falling once doubles the risk of falling again, which is the reason the grid has a person on the route with her, and the reason the night lights went in on Day 0. Write the fall in the log with the time, where she was and what she was doing. Then hand the log to whoever you called.
Sources: NIA, Falls and Fractures in Older Adults; NCOA, Get the Facts on Falls Prevention. Opened September 10, 2026.
- Start the log. One line for today, even if today was Day 0.
- Put the grid on the fridge next to the numbers sheet.
- Book the follow-up ride now, with two people if you can.
- Decide who holds the overnights on Day 4, 5 and 6, before Day 3 arrives.
Anything the log makes you wonder about is a question for the number on the discharge instructions. New confusion, a fall, a fever, a wound that looks different, a tablet she will not take, dizziness on the stairs: this page will not interpret any of it, and neither will a caregiver in the house. Their job is to notice and to call. The care team's job is to decide.