caregiver burnout Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

How to Assess the Caregiver and Avoid Hospital Readmission

August 30, 2017

Assessing the Family Caregiver is a new but crucial concept for geriatric care managers and professionals in aging.As geriatric care managers and aging professional, we are health and social services oriented. For almost 3 decades we have assessed the care receiver for problems with function, social connection, and psychological issues. If we suspect depression we have completed that screen. If our client plans to move, has cultural needs and preferences, exhibits signs of dementia, need ways to improve quality of life or a spiritual connection, we have assessed the care receiver for those problems.

All our assessments have left out the major fact – care is an exchange. To receive care, the patient/client usually needs a family caregiver to give or supervise it. That family caregiver is the glue that holds it all together and his or her inner bond begins to break with the strain of caring.

Other countries have seen what the US has yet to grasp. In the United Kingdom, a seminal law passed in 1995 called the Recognition and Services Act , which provided British caregivers a statutory right to request an assessment at the same time that a frail elder or adult with disabilities is assessed.

So developing a caregiver assessment is critical, especially in this era of penalties to hospitals for readmission. The caregiver is the key to keeping an older person in the community and not back in the hospital. If they are not trained, have physical problems that inhibit caring, find some tasks, like changing adult diapers uncomfortable, have no car to pick up meds or drive to the doctor’s follow up an appointment, you have a problem and probably a readmission.

Learn how to do a caregiver assessment along with a care receiver assessment .This will help you keep your aging client both out of the hospital and potentially out of inappropriate placement in a skilled nursing facility. Plus you will learn just not how to assess caregiver burnout but be able to create a care plan that will help your family caregiver have a better quality of life while they giver better care to their loved one. Read the chapter ” Assessing the Caregiver ” in my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family, Jones and Bartlett. The price has just been cut in half to make it more affordable for the practitioner.

5 Ways a Geriatric Care Manager help a Long Distance Care Provider

August 31, 2016

What Are the Red Flags For Caregiver Elder Abuse?

March 1, 2015

If caregiver abuse is suspected, a caregiver assessment is a critical immediate tool. This is a situation where the GCM must contact Adult Protective Services, following their own state’s laws. In most states you are a mandated reporter .Elder abuse can be triggered by caregiver stress and depression in some situations. Depression that reaches a clinical level in a caregiver can be predictive of elder abuse.

What are red flags for caregiver abuse that should be picked up in a psychosocial assessment in the beginning of the case and should trigger a caregiver assessment immediately?

The caregiver:

ØFears that he/she will become violent

ØSuffers from low self esteem

ØPerceives that she is not receiving

Adequate help or support from others

ØViews care giving as a burden

ØExperiences emotional and mental burnout

Depression or anxiety

ØFeels “caught in the middle” by

providing care to children and elderly

Family members at the same time

ØHas “old anger” toward the care

receiver that can be traced back to

their relationship in the past

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How Do You Convince Family Caregiver to Accept Caregiver Assessment

February 28, 2015

Caregivers frequently neglect their own health and balk at a caregiver assessment. How does a care manager sell this needed product to a family caregiver ? The care manager must make the link between the needs and health of the caregiver and the health of the care receiver crystal clear. Underscoring that the caregiver cannot care for the client if they themselves are ill or unhealthy is often a good way to approach this.

You can meet their resistance by emphasizing that this is all about making them strong and healthy enough to continue to render care. This means being convinced you as a GCM that the caregiver assessment is a needed product. You can’t sell this to the Family caregiver unless you believe in it yourself. You have to understand that if your caregiver falls apart, your care plan also falls apart. Assessing the care provider means an intact care plan, no unnecessary placement, and less chance of hiring expensive but critically needed needed private home care because the caregiver fell mentally or physically ill from caregiver stress.

How Do You Measure Caregiver Burden?

February 23, 2015

How do you measure caregiver burden? It’s a simple equation. You start with a functional assessment of the care receiver. The care manager then should do a functional assessment of the caregiver imbedded in the caregiver assessment. This will begin to measure the caregiver’s burden. Next you should look at the caregiver’s tasks through the care plan you did in the functional assessment and the care receiver. Quite simply, if the caregiver ‘s task is to lift and turn the care receiver- her husband and she is in her early 80’s and cannot do this, their burden is so heavy they cannot do the job. Then, you see, the care receivers needs exceed the caregiver’s ability to do the task. You should probably hire a private care provider, get another family member or consider placement.

Another example is the care receiver’s has Alzheimer’s and one of the symptoms is she is walking out and getting lost. The family care provider, the daughter, has repeatedly walked, driven and searched frantically to track her down. The distraught daughter is now burning out from the job. She calls the care manager who does a caregiver assessment. The care manager might suggest tracking devices to lighten the burden like Project Lifesaver, Mind ME, and GPS Shoe that will make it easy to track the Alzheimer’s patient, to lighten the caregiver’s burden

The University of Utah Gerontology Department has an excellent Caregiver Burden Scale that can be used to measure whether the burden of care exceeds the caregivers ability to give it.

5 Ways a Geriatric Care Manager help a Long Distance Care Provider

What Are the Red Flags For Caregiver Elder Abuse?

How Do You Convince Family Caregiver to Accept Caregiver Assessment

How Do You Measure Caregiver Burden?

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