Weighing the options for care
November 22, 2011
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Christine Taylor is the founder and President of Nursing Home Ratings Inc. She explains what led to her interest in helping family caregivers to weigh the options for care for their loved ones. She explains the services she offers. She discusses the types of help family caregivers are looking for in weighing options for care in relation to the types of health conditions affecting their family members. She analyzes the types and options of care for care and relates these to the challenges faced by family caregivers. She talks about challenges of weighing care relative to options, quality and cost. She discussed how the weighing of care options should be influenced by family caregivers’ own challenges, such as their own physical, mental, and financial health. She tells us what more she would like to see done to give more help to family caregivers weighing options for care for family members. She speaks her strongest message for family caregivers weighing care for a family member.
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.
