Angela Bobo is caring for her 87-year-old mother, Ruth, whose memory and thinking ability has been slowly declining as a result of dementia. They live together just outside of Philadelphia, along with Angela’s children. Angela, and other family members, take turns caring for Ruth. While they have schedules and routines, the tasks they need to take on require experience and skills they do not have.
There are more than 40 million “unpaid” family caregivers like Angela in the U.S. Most family caregivers are caring for a frail older adult. They are often women with a full-time job and children. But they are not all women. The percentage of caregivers who are men are increasing, as are the number of millennials becoming more involved in caring for someone at home.
Ken Everhart, who cared for his wife Genie, told reporters at WHYY, NPR Shots and Kaiser Health News: “what we needed was for someone to sit me down in a class and say ‘Here’s how you change the sheets while she’s still in bed. Here’s how you take her blood pressure. Here’s how you monitor her breathing.’”
Given that most people cannot afford to use trained caregivers, there is an opportunity and a growing need to provide family caregivers the training they need. Organizations like AARP are lobbying for efforts to prepare potential caregivers to know what a sick person may need and they are also developing training videos in partnership with the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.
Family caregivers struggle with tasks often considered nursing aspects of care ― managing medication, managing complex wound care, even transferring someone in and out of bed or of a chair. The school will develop a series of tutorial videos to serve as tools for family caregivers as they manage complex nursing activities within the home. Dean Heather Young points out that the with school’s interprofessional approach “we are able to draw upon our colleagues from pharmacy, medicine and nursing to identify the most accurate information and translate it into a very accessible platform for family caregivers.”
Read more about family caregivers and listen to the news story here.
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