‘Offering care for the caregiver’
January 23, 2010“It comes as no surprise, then, that physicians now rarely, if ever, learn about what a family caregiver or health care aide must do unless they are faced with caring for their own loved ones. We doctors don’t know or aren’t always fully aware of what it takes to care for a patient after we leave the room.”
“Of particular importance is understanding how the work of caregiving can also give rise to a new set of medical issues: those of the caregiver. Caregiving duties place tremendous stresses on an individual, and not all of those stressors are simply physical and emotional. ‘Some of these 37-going-on-40 million family caregivers have had to give up their own jobs in order to care for the patients,’ Dr. Hood said. ‘That means they aren’t going to be able to put aside money for their retirement. Who is going to take care of them and their medical problems in the future?’”
