Question

Write an essay about the concept of family caregiving in the context of what type of families provide care, key issues for carers, and strategies and/or resources that might be required. Include in your answer information about how you would analyse strategies to ensure families, carers, and friends are supported and provide a list of necessary considerations such as legislation.

Answer 1

As life expectancies increase, medical treatments advance, and increasing numbers of people live with chronic illness and disabilities, more and more of us find ourselves caring for a loved one at home. Whether taking care of an aging parent, a handicapped spouse, or looking after a child with a physical or mental illness, providing care for a family member in need is an act of kindness, love, and loyalty.

The terms family caregiver and informal caregiver refer to an unpaid family member, friend, or neighbor who provides care to an individual who has an acute or chronic condition and needs assistance to manage a variety of tasks, from bathing, dressing, and taking medications to tube feeding and ventilator care.

Most caregivers are women who handle time-consuming and difficult tasks like personal care. But at least 40 percent of caregivers are men. These male caregivers are becoming more involved in complex tasks like managing finances and arranging care, as well as direct assistance with more personal care.

Some of the Responsibilities of care givers are:

• Caregivers spend a substantial amount of time interacting with their care recipients, while providing care in a wide range of activities.
• Helping with medications, especially when the care recipient is receiving multiple medications several times a day, including injections, inhalers, eye drops, and crushed tablets.
• Assistance with bathing
• Supervising people with dementia and observing for early signs of problems, such as medication side effects, are serious responsibilities.
• Being responsible for medical and nursing procedures like managing urinary catheters, skin care around a central line, gastrostomy tube feedings, and ventilators.

Issues for carers:

• Family caregivers often feel unprepared to provide care, have inadequate knowledge to deliver proper care, and receive little guidance from the formal health care providers.
• Caregivers manage between one and 14 medications on a daily basis, have difficulty keeping so many prescriptions filled, and often miss doses due to their work schedules.
• Their responsibility to monitor for adverse or toxic effects in family members who are not capable of reporting problems themselves is important in preventing dehydration brought on by vomiting and diarrhea, and even more serious emergency situations. Caregivers need education to recognize both classic and atypical adverse drug effects they may see as their family member’s condition changes, and help in developing the critical thinking skills that would enable them to manage these potential problems.
• Due to inadequate knowledge and skill, family caregivers may be unfamiliar with the type of care they must provide or the amount of care needed.
• Family caregivers may not know when they need community resources, and then may not know how to access and best utilize available resources.
• Caregivers often neglect their own health care needs in order to assist their family member, causing deterioration in the caregiver’s health and well-being. Caregivers are hidden patients themselves, with serious adverse physical and mental health consequences from their physically and emotionally demanding work as caregivers and reduced attention to their own health and health care.
• Caregivers who attempt to balance caregiving with their other activities, such as work, family, and leisure, may find it difficult to focus on the positive aspects of caregiving and often experience more negative reactions, such as an increased sense of burden.
• Low personal and household incomes and limited financial resources can result in increased caregiver risk for negative outcomes, particularly if there are substantial out-of-pocket costs for care recipient needs. Caregivers who are unemployed or have low incomes may experience more distress because they may have fewer resources to meet care demands.
• Care recipients’ functional, cognitive, and emotional status predicts caregiver burden and depression, which may be manifested in feelings of loneliness and isolation, fearfulness, and being easily bothered, as the demands of caregiving limit their personal time.
• Care recipient behavior such as screaming, yelling, swearing, and threatening are associated with increased caregiver clinical depression.
• Caregivers get very little help from health care professionals in managing their tasks and the emotional demands of caregiving.
• Effective discharge planning is impeded by gaps in communication between the hospital and community interface, such as illegible discharge summaries and delays in sending information to the physician.
• Caregivers experience their family member’s discharge from the hospital as an abrupt and upsetting event because the hospital staff did not prepare them for the technical and emotional challenges ahead of them. Many caregivers felt abandoned at a critical time.

SOME RESOURCES THAT MAY BE REQUIRED ARE:

• Multicomponent interventions, rather than single interventions like support groups or education, significantly reduced burden.
• Comprehensive counseling sessions for spouses caring for a person with dementia help reduce depression. Counseling appeared to be effective in improving the quality of life for caregivers of stroke survivors. However, even a simple one-to-one telephone call may be effective in helping the caregiver as client.
• An automated, interactive voice-response telephone support system for caregivers reduced burden for those caregivers with a lower sense of control over their situation.
• Home visits and enhanced social support also can help reduce caregiver depression.
• Home care intervention that consist of a specialist nurse coordinator, a 24-hour nurse telephone service with access to a home care team, a collaborative home care dossier and case file, and care protocols can improve confidence and competence.
• COPE (Creativity, Optimism, Planning, and Expert information): COPE teaches caregivers how to design and carry out plans that focus on medical and psychosocial problems that are coordinated with care plans of health professionals.
• Teaching caregivers how to manage specific patient problems can improve the caregiver’s well-being. For example, not being able to sleep at night is a serious problem for caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease, as the caregivers become fatigued and exhausted, which can have an adverse effect on both the physical and emotional health of the caregiver. Teaching them how to improve their family members’ nighttime insomnia through daily walks and exposure to light can improve sleep time for both the caregiver and care recipient.
• Skills and coping training intervention with family caregivers of hospice patients improved the caregivers’ quality of life.

Some strategies that will be helpful for a caregiver are:

Accept one's feelings: Caregiving can trigger a host of difficult emotions, including anger, fear, resentment, guilt, helplessness, and grief. It’s important to acknowledge and accept the feeling, both good and bad.

Find caregiver support: One will need help from friends, siblings, and other family members, as well as from health professionals. But before asking for help, we need to have a clear understanding of the family member’s needs. Other places for care giver support include Caregiver support groups at a local hospital or online, A therapist, social worker, or counselor, National caregiver organizations, Organizations specific to the family member’s illness or disability.

Really connect with the loved one: When handled in the right way, caring for a loved one can bring meaning and pleasure—to both, the caregiver, and to the person caring for.

Attend to one's own needs: If one is distracted, burned out, or otherwise overwhelmed by the daily grind of caregiving, he/ she is likely find it difficult to connect with the person caring for. Care givers need care too. Take time to relax daily, Talk with someone, Keep a journal, Pray, meditate,Watch out for signs of depression, anxiety, or burnout, Stay social, Give oneself a break, Find a community, Exercise regularly, eat right, avoid alcohol and drugs, get enough sleep.

Take advantage of community services: Services that may be available in the community include adult day care centers, home health aides, home-delivered meals, respite care, transportation services, and skilled nursing.

Provide long-distance care: Many people take on the role of designated caregiver for a family member—often an older relative or sibling—while living more than an hour’s travel away.

• Set up an alarm system.
• Manage doctor and medical appointments. Try to schedule all medical appointments together, at a time when you’ll be in the area.
• Use a case manager. Some hospitals or insurance plans can assign case managers to coordinate with the loved one’s care, monitor their progress, manage billing, and communicate with the family.
• Investigate local services. When not there, try to find local services that can offer home help services, deliver meals, or provide local transportation for the loved one.
• Schedule regular communication :A daily email, text message, or quick phone call can let the loved one know that they’re not forgotten.
• Arrange telephone check-ins from a local religious group, senior center, or other public or nonprofit organization.