Caring for Caregivers

Family members who provide unpaid care to their disabled or elderly relatives are shouldering an increasing burden.

The following excerpts are from Jane Gross, Who Cares for the Caregivers?, NY Times, Oct. 14, 2008:

The economic value of family caregiving in 2006 was $350 billion, according to recent research, a figure that exceeded the total spending for either Medicaid ($342 billion) or Medicare ($300 billion) in 2005. Without the unpaid labor of family caregivers — provided at great physical, emotional and financial cost — the long-term care system in this country (if you can call it a “system”) would collapse.  * * *

Rarely does anyone pay attention to the caregiver’s declining physical and emotional health, and many risk becoming patients themselves. Rarely does anyone tell us about hands-on care, about tube feedings, transferring bed-bound patients to wheelchairs or commodes, turning them to avoid bedsores, making judgments about which symptoms require immediate medical attention, and interacting with a cast of professionals often short on time, patience or shared information about the patient.  * * *

One of the most promising ideas is to assign the task of educating and supporting family caregivers to the geriatric nurses and social workers who already work most closely with families. * * *

Special thanks to Trina Montalban (attorney, Kell, Alterman & Runstein, L.L.P., Portland, Oregon) for bringing this article to my attention.