Home Care for Family Members by Family Caregivers Working with Professional Caregivers
November 1, 2011
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Sharon Carr, a Registered Nurse with 35 years of nursing experience, and Bill Lougheed, a retiree with a distinguished career, discuss home care for family members provided by family caregivers working with professional caregivers. Sharon says how she became involved with in-home care services for clients and their family caregivers, and what the services are that she provides. Bill talks about his family caregiver and the way she works with the professional services Sharon’s team provides, his needs for caregiving services in his home, and the services he receives. They explore the idea of teamwork in home care for family members when family caregivers are working with professional caregivers, and identify the important things that family caregivers need to know so the teamwork succeeds. They both share the teamwork messages they would like to give to family caregivers who are wondering about professional services to help their loved ones stay at home for as long as possible.
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.
