Article: "Caregiving Defined in Two Words"
It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, whether
it’s clearing snow from the porch or running a marathon, it is
always a good idea to know the primary, overriding objective of the
task. Why? Because keeping the main objective in mind may alter
the way you actually perform the task. Are you trying to make the
porch look nice or are you trying to keep the snow from tracking
into the house on people’s shoes? Are you running the marathon to
improve your health or to win?
“What difference does it make?” you ask. Maybe
a huge difference, maybe not. If you are merely trying to keep snow
from tracking into the house, simply clearing the walking path to the
door may be enough. Why go to all the extra work of clearing the entire
porch when it isn’t necessary to achieve the objective? If you are
running simply to improve your health, you don’t have to run as fast; in
fact slower may actually be better!
The same is true of caregiving. We caregivers
have way too much to do, and way too much stress and pressure to do it
all. What is it all about, anyway? How can we take off a little of the
pressure? How can we make our jobs a little easier? When you boil it
down to the very basics, the single most important task of caregiving in
my opinion, in fact its very definition, is to “reduce stress” on the
patient. Period. Everything we do should be based around that simple
concept. I try to keep that in mind every day, and it helps guide my
thinking and my activities.
Here’s the tricky part: every patient is
different, so reducing stress may be different for your patient than
mine. I wanted to do all the scheduling and driving in order to make it
easier for my wife, and she loved the fact that she didn’t have to worry
about it! I was reducing her stress, so I was doing my job.
On the other side of the issue, I recently spoke
to a man whose wife was going through breast cancer treatment and she
wanted to do everything herself; she didn’t even want him to go with her
to treatments or appointments. If he had insisted on doing it all and
going with her as I did with my wife, that would have INCREASED her
stress rather than reduced it.
The second point, then, is to concentrate on
things that actually stress your patient rather than the things that you
THINK stress your patient or that SHOULD stress your patient. This is
about them, not about you.
Some people find it very stressful to talk about
their situation with others and to hear the inevitable comments such as
“I’m so sorry” or “What can I do to help” or “Here’s what happened to my
friend….” or “I knew someone that was in your situation and they
died.” (Really, people say things like that!) Others find it
comforting to talk about it and the more they talk the better they
feel. What should you do; should you take over the responsibility to
communicate with family and friends or let your patient do it? The
answer is, “It depends.” If your patient finds it stressful then you
should do it, end of discussion. What if YOU find it stressful? Do it
anyway.
This brings up point number three: sometimes
you’ve got to do things you don’t like to do in the name of reducing
stress on your patient. Do them anyway, because when all is said and
done you will feel a sense of pride and accomplishment and, more
importantly, you will have succeeded in reducing your patient’s stress.
We do have to take care of ourselves, though, so
taking on a task that is TOO stressful could be difficult to bear
considering all of our other responsibilities. There is an option: find
another way to do it by either changing your method or finding help.
Point number four, then, is that taking
responsibility for tasks that are stressful on your patient is different
than actually doing them yourself. If you need or want help, get it.
If you find an alternative way of doing something that makes it less
stressful for YOU, do it that way. Remember the primary objective:
reduce stress on your patient. That doesn’t necessarily mean doing
everything yourself, but rather finding a way to get stressful things
done so that your patient doesn’t have to do them.
This is the power of keeping the ultimate
objective in mind – it can change the way you think about things and how
you go about doing them.
© 2008, Dave Balch ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
|
