How many hours - 2024 06 12

 


We had our first assessment with Case Manager this week, to see if Mom could be registered with the Family Respite Centre. The Family Respite Centre is a facility that provides overnight long term care accommodations for up to 30 days a year so that the primary caregiver can get a significant break from caregiving duty. 

The assessment process was a sit-down interview answering questions from a questionnaire.

One of the questions was directed at me, and it read, "How many hours a week do you provide care to your Mom?"

This question is impossible to answer because, on the one hand, a family caregiver might think they are supposed to account for hours based on time on task, with 'task' defined as actually doing hands-on work - meal prep, sweep up, dishes, laundry, floors, etc. But the work of family caregiving does not fit into this model for measurement because most of the family caregiver's time doing hands-on tasks is too short, numerous and variable to measure. Especially when we are often doing two or even three things at once - empty commode, kettle on to boil for tea, dentures rinsed and set out for the day, etc. 

On the other hand, a family caregiver may not have any idea of how they are supposed to represent the work they are doing, and feel inadequate because they feel exhausted and burned out, but they can't actually show their work in terms of exact or even estimated hours per week working on caregiving tasks.

In addition, the work of family caregiving spreads across multiple layers of functionality and levels of responsibility. Logging onto the medical centre website to make a doctor's appointment, waiting for the doctor's call, speaking on behalf of their family member who cannot speak for themselves - this work does not break down to hourly time on task in the same way cleaning up after a bowel accident might be recorded.

We need to take a wholistic approach to measuring time on task for family caregiving. We need to define 'task' to encompass all the work that is being done when a family caregiver is providing services to operate a home-based caregiving bed. The definition of 'task' needs to refer to the 'duties' that a family caregiver is responsible for, even when they are asleep. How do you account for the hours when you are woken from your sleep to help change a soaked pair of Depends?

We are in our third year of family caregiving and we have not been able to bring my hours on caregiving duty below 400 hours a month. In this scenario, I am still not free to actually take a trip to visit my new grand-daughter or attend the graduation of one of my grandchildren. I can't actually leave for more than a few hours at a time to do anything. I still need to be available to assist if my family respite helper has a question or needs a hand with a difficult situation.

How many hours am I providing care to my frail, elder Mom? I am operating a home-based caregiving bed and that operation is 24/7, 7 days a week, in the month of July it will be a 744 hour month.

Does that answer the question?


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