Family Caregiving in the Muslim Community
April 12, 2011
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Sheikh Alaa the Director of Religious Affairs for the Islamic Centre of Canada-ISNA and Ahmed El-Zoeiby is a licensed pharmacist practicing in Canada. They talk about their work and their contacts with family caregivers in the Muslim community. They explain how Islamic values relate to family caregiving. sheikh Alaa highlights the challenges that he hears about from family caregivers, and describes the challenges that seem most difficult. Ahmed describes the challenges that family caregivers experience with medications for their family members and with healthcare generally. sheikh Alaa says how well the needs of family caregivers in the Muslim community are understood by the social services, and how communications can be improved. Ahmed says how well the needs of family caregivers in the Muslim community are understood by the healthcare system, and how communications can be improved. They both say how they would like to see help improved for family caregivers in immigrant communities.
Family Caregivers Unite!
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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.
