For almost two years now, the pandemic has upended our lives and daily routines. It has strained our healthcare resources and isolated us from each other. And while we’ve all been affected, it has had a particularly devastating impact on the most vulnerable among us, especially those in managed care facilities like nursing homes who are not only isolated and alone but often find themselves living in unsafe conditions. For many family members, this has meant reassessing and reprioritizing in-home care and, with it, their role as the primary care provider.
But providing care at home, especially during a global pandemic, comes with its own set of challenges, and too often caregivers don’t realize in advance what will be expected of them - from navigating the protocols and procedures of telehealth and a host of other new technologies, to providing professional medical care that may have previously been performed at a hospital or in a doctor’s office.
“More and more Americans and their loved ones are taking on considerable responsibility for care, whether that's following short-term pre- and post-procedure orders, or managing chronic conditions over the long haul,” says Bob Stephen, Vice President of Caregiving for AARP. In fact, a recent report from the Founders of the Home Alone Alliance™, a collaborative of AARP, estimates that as many as 20-million family caregivers are providing complex medical and nursing care at home with very little support, guidance, or instruction, and many aren’t aware of the resources available to them.
“If the family caregiver is going to be asked to do something that is complex like changing a wound or a catheter, the caregiver needs to be told about it and trained on how to do it before the patient is discharged,” Stephen points out. “The more support, training, and guidance we can give family caregivers in their roles, the better the outcomes will be for all.”
Families and patients are often not aware of potential care options or how to evaluate what’s available near them to make medical and non-medical care easier and more comfortable for all. As founding partners of the Home Alone Alliance, AARP is a key source of resources and information for family caregivers on non-medical tasks such as meal prep and home safety, as well as medical nursing tasks like wound care and administering medications.