Family Caregivers Making Sense of the Latest Research
November 16, 2010
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Dr Kim Bercovitz is a medical sociologist with a PhD in Community Health. Craig Thompson is a freelance digital media producer specializing in the development of online support tools for healthcare. They discuss the challenges created for family caregivers by media reports of the latest research into conditions with potential implications for the family, and how family caregivers follow up on these reports. They explain how research and similar organizations connect and communicate with family caregivers. They discuss the extent to which the Internet is replacing doctors as the source of information about the latest research. They talk about the limitations of some of information on the internet. They discuss what more they’d like to see done by healthcare to explain new developments to family caregivers. They say what’s needed to enhance support for family caregivers and their family members struggling to make sense of the latest findings that could be important to their family.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
