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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Working American caregivers — those who work at least 15 hours per week and help care for an aging family member, relative, or friend — report that their caregiving obligations significantly affect their work life.

The majority of caregivers say that caregiving has at least some impact on their performance at work. Based on a five-point scale, where five is a great impact and one is no impact, 10% of caregivers choose five and 44% pick somewhere between two and four.

Additionally, 24% of caregivers say that providing care to an aging family member, relative, or friend keeps them from being able to work more.

Most caregivers also report missing entire workdays as a result of their caregiving responsibilities. Thirty-six percent report missing one to five days per year because of caregiving duties, while 30% say they missed six or more days in the past year.

Overall, caregivers reporting missing an average of 6.6 workdays per year. With approximately 17% of the American full-time workforce acting as caregivers, this amounts to a combined 126 million missed workdays each year. This absenteeism costs the U.S. economy an estimated $25.2 billion in lost productivity per year. Including caregivers who work part time in the equation would cause absenteeism costs to climb even higher.

These findings are from a special survey of Americans who self-identified as caregivers in Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index surveys throughout 2010. Gallup recontacted those self-identified caregivers and interviewed 2,805 who were also employed at least 15 hours per week for a Pfizer-ReACT/Gallup poll specifically about caregiving. All respondents answered affirmatively to the question, “Do you currently help care for an elderly family member, relative, or friend, or not?”

Most Working Caregivers in Professional Roles

Nearly one-third of all working caregivers are in a professional occupation, with another 12% each in service and management roles. Less than 5% of caregivers work in other professions such as installation/repair, transportation, and construction.

Most caregivers (71%) indicate that their employer is aware of their caregiving status, but another 28% believe that their employer is unaware. Furthermore, an analysis of knowledge of workplace support programs shows that about one-quarter or less of working caregivers have access to support groups, ask-a-nurse-type services, financial/legal advisors, and assisted living counselors through their respective workplaces.

Source: Gallup.com

If you or a loved one would like more information about home care services in Sterling Heights, MI, and surrounding areas, please contact Pure Home Care Services at (586) 293-2457 today!

Almost 40 percent of chronically ill older adults in the U.S. live alone, and a majority of those who are married have spouses with at least one chronic illness that can affect their ability to provide support, according to a U-M study published in the journal Chronic Illness.

The results underscore the importance of health care professionals directly addressing the roles that family members play in the care of their aging parents or other relatives.

“Family members have the potential to significantly help many patients with chronic illness manage their health conditions,” says co-author Ann Marie Rosland, M.D., clinical lecturer in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and research investigator for the Center for Clinical Management Research in the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

“However those family members need more than just information to be successful. We need to teach family members communication skills and provide the tools that they can use to encourage patients to stick to their health regimen.”

The study’s authors looked at U.S. residents who were age 51 or older with chronic health problems who participated in the 2006 Health and Retirement Study, a national longitudinal study conducted at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and funded by the National Institute on Aging.

Researchers found that 93 percent of the chronically ill older adults had adult children, but for half of them, the children lived more than 10 miles away.

Roughly 19 million older chronically ill Americans have adult children living at a distance.

“Even when a spouse is available, the vast majority struggle with their own chronic medical needs and functional limitations,” says John D. Piette, Ph.D., professor of internal medicine and a senior career scientist with the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

“Fortunately, most of these people had adult children who could be another source of support for their chronic illness care,” he says. “But these relationships are increasingly strained as adult children move father away from their parents to seek employment or find a more affordable living situation. Distances pose a barrier to the monitoring and frequent support for behavior change that many chronically ill patients need.”

Piette and his colleagues at U-M are working to develop telephone monitoring systems that involve family members in a relative’s care through e-mail alerts or automated phone calls. The “CarePartners” program has been developed for patients with heart failure, diabetes, depression, and cancer chemotherapy. The program is being studied as part of randomized trials and community demonstration programs throughout mission as well as internationally. Learn more about CarePartners here and in Spanish, here.

“We know that people with family support follow their self-care regimen more regularly and this is vital to maintaining their health,” says Maria Silveira, M.D., M.P.H., physician scientist at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Additional U-M authors include Mohammed Kabeto, M.S., research associate in internal medicine and Kenneth M. Langa, M.D., Ph.D., professor of internal medicine, core investigator with VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System’s Clinical Management Research, and professor of health management and policy at U-M’s School of Public Health.

The paper was one of four featured in this issue of Chronic Illness, for which Piette served as editor.

The other U-M research presented online in late March included:

A study on emerging models for mobilizing family support for chronic disease management, authored by Rosland and Piette.

An investigation of the ways in which family members help or hinder self-management among functionally independent adults with diabetes or heart failure, authored by Rosland, Silveira, Piette and Michele Heisler, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of internal medicine and assistant professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at U-M and Hwa-Jung Choi, Ph.D., research analyst in U-M’s Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program.

Caregiver’s perceptions of cancer patients’ symptoms and how understanding symptoms can affect the patient’s outcomes over time by Silveira, Rosland, Piette and Michigan State University’s Charles Given and Barbara Given.

Commentary by Piette on “Moving beyond the notion of ‘self’ care.”

“The challenges facing chronically ill patients, their families and their clinical teams are enormous,” Piette says. “We need a recognition that for many patients ‘self’ management is a misnomer, since their disease care is actually shared by their family and broader social network.”

Informal caregivers play essential roles in filling the gaps in services found in most formal healthcare systems, such as providing assistance with transportation, medication refilling, emotional support, activities of daily living and a host of other vital tasks.

“Indeed, for many chronically ill patients, sharing their burden with intimate others makes living with their disease not only possible physically, but also worthwhile emotionally and spiritually,” Piette says.

Source: University of Michigan Health System

If you would like more information about home care services in Sterling Heights, MI and surrounding areas, contact Pure Home Care Services today at (586) 293-2457