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Stay at
Home Elder Care Management
There is a problem with some
caregivers being insufficiently trained. Geriatric care managers offer
a solution by monitoring the quality of care and making sure that caregivers
are, in fact, adequately trained.
Give caregivers the support
of professional geriatric care managers and they may reward you by delivering
compassionate, professional care and remaining on the job for a long time.
Caregivers (CNA's & HHA's)
who carry tremendous responsibility often feel the weight of high expectations.
Family members and home care agencies demand a high level of professional
commitment and performance.
Faced with the juggling act
of running successful businesses, home care agency owners often are stretched
in four or five different directions at the same time. Faced with multiple
demands, many of them urgent, the agency owner frequently is unable to
train, support, and monitor the caregiving staff. Caregivers who don't
receive adequate training, however, tend to become frustrated and discouraged.
The net result has been high turnover.
The situation becomes even
more complex when you factor in the often unspoken assumption by some providers
that investment in employee development won't pay off because employees
always leave anyway.
High expectations are placed
on caregivers by the elderly and their families.
Family members expect the caregiver
to:
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Deliver compassionate and professional
care to elderly parents
Interact positively with family
members
-
Perform many duties requiring
physical exertion and great patience
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Be reliable and willing to work
as needed
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Work for relatively low wages
While none of these expectations
may appear to be unreasonable, caregivers can quickly become disillusioned
and frustrated if they aren't provided the skills, training, and support
from a care manager to do their jobs properly. The caregiver may leave,
or he may stay, but without care management, may deliver less than exceptional
elder care and suffer from low morale which demoralizes everyone involved.
For their part, caregivers
expect:
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The tools, training, and support
from care management professionals necessary to do the job well
-
Opportunity for education and
training
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Respect and recognition for a
job well done
In short, the caregiver expects
to be treated as a professional, which isn't unreasonable. If family members
demand professional performance overall, i.e. they must commit to providing
the requisite training, care manager monitoring, and recognition to enable
their success.
It isn't unusual for caregivers
to feel that their legitimate professional expectations fall to the bottom
of the list.
Although there's no panacea
to the challenges of staffing a home with a good caregiver, clearly the
one avenue of endeavor that helps meet everyone's expectations is professional
geriatric care management. With guidance and support from professional
GCMs, caregivers in the home are far more able to meet expectations for
delivery of quality car. When they know the professional geriatric care
manager comes once a week, caregivers for the elderly know they have to
keep on their toes - - and also that they have someone to talk to about
their concerns and problems on the job or with the family. The geriatric
care manager then is able to be the glue that holds good home care together
so that aging people and their family members have less stress and increased
well being.
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