The Caregiving life is a website for home health workers and family caregivers
* Managing Disease
* Making Difficult Decisions
around the end of life
* contending with caregiver's
crushing loneliness
the caregiving life teaches home health workers and family caregivers daily disease management of:
* congestive heart failure
* type 2 diabetes
* copd
* alzheimer's disease
pills
compression
stockings
injections
companionship
pushing a wheelchair
people with advanced & end-stage chronic disease need daily disease management
they can't do it themselves. for most, physical and psychiatric cognitive problems make managing their own diseases unrealistic
generally, doctors & nurses only see their patients once every few months
contribution to this problem:
there is a projected shortage of 122,000 doctors by 2032
but home health workers and family caregivers are with patients every day, all day long
their devotion and caring is extraordinary!
helping with
dressing
sharing
breakfast
morning
meds
sharing lunch
watching TV
sharing dinner
helping with
bath
Night Time meds
bedtime
but there is a problem
home health workers and family caregivers are not trained in health or medical care
most home health workers get just 2 weeks of training when they're first hired, and that's about it - and hardly any of it is about disease management
it's a lot for 2 weeks
- a lot to learn
- a lot to remember
- nothing about disease management
nobody becomes a family caregiver because they want to
"hello, mr. bael?"
"yes?"
"your father
had a stroke"
"hmm"
pause…
"is that bad?"
(true story about this writer
before he became a nurse)
I moved in with my father the next day
after two months i returned to my wife and children, and hired samantha, a home health worker who lovingly cared for my father until he died 7 years later
- we were both with him when he passed
