Family Caregivers Can Provide Much Needed Support for Health Care Industry
Health Affairs Study Has Me Dubious At Best; You Decide!
A new Health Affairs study notes that "acknowledging, incorporating and supporting the “invisible workforce” of informal family caregivers can benefit residents, professional caregivers and staff members in assisted living communities and other long-term care residential settings.”
They go on to say that the work of family caregivers “could be acknowledged more formally through integrating family caregivers into care teams, prioritizing safe visits with family members during emergencies, and including family caregivers in prioritization formulas for vaccines during future pandemics.” It goes on to say that integration could “take the form of providing payment for services and offering formal training.
Many of us in the industry have been advocating for more formal recognition and incorporation of family caregivers into care and care plans. It has been met with deaf ears. Even as we have created another layer of management with “experience officers” there has been little done to embrace caregivers. Just communicating with them has been an issue.
What do you think?
I am dubious anything will change because it will require time and resources from the health care industry to do this correctly. And to misconstrue this study as an excuse for free labor is probably the exact opposite of what the authors intended.
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