As a nurse or future nurse, you will interact and engage both with patients and their loved ones. Sometimes that loved one plays a major role in your patient’s well-being, in the form of a caregiver.
Caregivers tend to be the most unrecognized individuals in healthcare. They are sometimes referred to as the “invisible workforce” of care. Taking on this role requires extraordinary personal sacrifice. A family caregiver is responsible for a patient who requires continuous care between office visits and treatments. The caregiver devotes extensive time and effort to assisting, protecting, and nourishing an ill, elderly, or disabled loved one, and they deserve our highest esteem.
Most caregivers—sometimes called “informal caregivers”—are unpaid. With an average age of 70, many caregivers are elders themselves. Most have little, if any, professional training and a strong emotional investment in an ailing, aging, or disabled loved one. These loving, generous people deserve appreciation, but beyond that, they desperately need support.
A caregiver’s physical and mental health has been shown to have concurrent impact on the health of the patient. It is therefore incumbent upon healthcare professionals to be cognizant of the physical and psychological health of their patient’s caregiver.
In this post, we’ll explore how you as a nurse can provide essential support to the informal caregiver. Beyond the partnership you develop, how can you ensure that this individual is receiving the information, guidance, and even emotional support they need to fulfill their important role in their loved one’s health?
The first step in understanding how to support caregivers is to understand their situation, which brings us to…
Causes of Caregiver Stress
Beyond the emotional toll of caring for an aging parent or disabled family member, caregivers are subject to physical and psychological strain that can affect their health. Of the many contributing factors to caregiver stress, physical strain is the most prevalent. This is unsurprising since caregivers are often caring for patients with limited mobility, which requires frequent lifting and moving of the patient. Commitment to someone else’s care can significantly impact one’s own lifestyle and health. Common stressors and risks for caregivers include:
- Anxiety
- Fatigue
- Difficulty sleeping
- Weight fluctuation
- Headaches or body pain
- Irritability or depressed mood
- Alcohol or substance abuse
- Mortality
These risk factors compound with other lifestyle challenges like maintaining a healthy diet, regular physical activity, and a social life. Other common factors that add to caregiver stress include patient behavioral issues, and in many cases, financial hardship. Caregivers may or may not have financial stability or a family support system. It’s a lot to deal with.
While you as a nurse cannot mitigate many of these factors, there are a number of things you can do to support a caregiver so they are equipped to give the best possible care to the patient while finding some life balance and self-care of their own.
The Nurse Role in Caregiver Care
As a nurse, your contact with a caregiver may be limited to a single office visit or a repeated touchpoints during ongoing care. Either way, you enter into a partnership of sorts with the individual who is looking after the patient. You are both responsible for the health and well-being of that patient.
You may meet a caregiver while they’re figuring out how to access healthcare services for the patient, during end-of-life decision-making, or at any point in between. In each of these scenarios, the relationship is strongest when there is a consistent flow of information between nurse and caregiver.
In the midst of care, this means actively dispensing any information to the caregiver on each discharge, as well as requesting any updates from them. Creating a communication-rich relationship where a caregiver feels invited to ask questions helps remove the weight of uncertainty and powerlessness. Remember that some people are intimidated by a healthcare environment and may need to be encouraged to communicate freely.
End-of-life decision-making can be very stressful on a caregiver, and they may lean on the patient’s healthcare team for clinical guidance necessary to decide “when it’s time.” This should be appropriately handled with the patient’s primary healthcare provider, but you may be a part of this conversation as well.
During all of these phases of the nurse-caregiver relationship, you should actively and freely encourage the caregiver to pursue support outside of the healthcare facility. There are abundant resources available from which they can benefit, particularly when there isn’t a strong family support system in place. These types of external support may include:
- Informational resources: There are numerous resources available for those who know where to look. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services lists many helpful organizations and websites, and it’s a great place to start.
- Positive activities: This can be any wellness or self-care activity. Caregivers need to make time for organized exercise, hobbies, or pastimes as simple as quiet reading or a nature walk.
- Social support: Beyond caregiver support groups, which can be found online or locally, caregivers should make time for friends and family, and ask for encouragement and help when they need it.
Original source can be found here.
