Quality improvement project implementation and outcomes

Caregiving to Elderly People

In this document, interactive caregiving training is briefly discussed.

Caregiving to Elder People

Recent developments at the medical industry and more health conscious diet increase the life expectancy. According to the Census, 36.3 million Americans were 65 and over in 2004 and the numbers are expected to increase as 71.5 million in 2030. Aging brings serious memory problems, emotional and physical declines along with the natural changes of inner and outer organs. Taking a good care of an elderly person with memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer's disease is a very demanding job requiring serious physical and mental efforts. Therefore, intellectual and mental training of the caregivers is very important. The physical work caregivers undertake is very hard including bathing elderly people, feeding them, running errands and trying to understand what they really need. The result of this long-term care is exhaustion, anxiety and depression. Regardless of the relationship of caregiver and the elderly person, the emotional and physical effects of caregiving would last long time after stopping to take care of the person (either patient's death or sending the patient to a nursing home).

The lesson for caregivers should start with explaining the physical changes with aging; the impacts of cognitive changes followed by a method how to deal with these issues.

As an example, most elderly people's long-term memory remains intact whereas the short-term memory requires more time for retrieval and retention. In other words, the elderly people remember the past but have difficulties to remember today. It would help them to provide a caregiver from the same ethnical background who understands the culture and rituals of the certain ethnical background. The strategy would be organizing some social groups including caregivers and elderly people sharing same ethnical background and language. It could be more beneficial for them to exchanging ideas than being lectured. Therefore, they should be talking, explaining their feelings and experiences during these social work groups.

These classes for the caregivers should be given at the conference rooms of the Hope Hospice to provide a high attendance and opportunity to experiment the theories given during the theoretical sessions. Elderly caregiving is difficult not only for the caregiver but also the elder person. Therefore, some collaborative classes should be projected with counselors and psychologists.