The Ethical Imperative - 2023 08 13

 

The ethical imperative to reverse the negative socio-economic impacts of family caregiving are written across the Internet in tens of thousands of anguished posts written by family caregivers in high degrees of distress and hopelessness. 

Family caregivers express their feelings of disempowerment, of feeling taken advantage, of feeling taken fore granted, of how their lives have been consumed by caregiving responsibilities and they cannot see a future for themselves. 

The work they do is untraceable, there is no authoritative oversight. The work they do is unaccounted, the time and energy they put into caregiving is not recognized as employment. 

They find themselves in an impossible dilemma - they cannot, in good conscience, leave their family member to suffer or risk mistreatment from strangers; they also cannot, materially, financially, emotionally and mentally, sustain the level of output to family caregiving without suffering (their own health, the quality of their family relationships, the quality and demands of paid work). 

As their family caregiving timeline increases, the condition of their family member is likely to be stabilized or in a process of slow decline that demands ever more amounts of time and energy to manage. Family caregivers experience an aggregation of stressors: the draw down on their resources to maintain family caregiving due to inadequate system supports; the increase of family caregiving responsibilities as their family member's health declines and needs increase; the exponential impact of these two forces on family caregiver health and wellbeing.

Our healthcare system has a ethical obligation to ease and eliminate the suffering of family caregivers.