[procaare] Re: Pre-6th HCC: Taking care of caregivers (14)

[Celina Castro <procaare@healthnet.org>]

Subject: Re: Pre-6th HCC: Taking care of caregivers (14)
- Celina Castro, Philippines
****************************

I am a caregiver for more than a decade now and I was able to learn to one by doing. I
cannot do anything but to immediately act like one as there are not enough people who
wanted to engage in a noble work like this.

I started as a caregiver to a person with a life threatening illness, specifically cancer.
After this another came, cancer again, and then another cancer again, and another with an
auto-immune condition as they tell me. So, I just have to do my work compassionately with
protecting myself  [against...] tuberculosis and other communicable diseases.

In giving care, you also have to take care of yourself. I have two friends who are
caregivers, one is already suffering from TB and the other one has contracted skin
infections from her previous patient. They have to stop caregiving otherwise they will be
infecting most of their patients

This where I see that skilful training for caregivers should be done so that they are well
prepared and well skilled to face the noble work. This is also to see that we caregivers
are being supported in stress and burn-out management. We are just human beings who also
get tired, once tired are also having lowered resistance and therefore are very vulnerable
to any kind of diseases as well.

My questions are:

1. Are there any standard training curriculum for caregivers for people living with life
threatening illnesses like cancer, AIDS and other auto immune condition?

2. Is there any prescribed curriculum by any large international body governing health for
caregivers?

3. There are proliferating caregivers training anywhere in developing world, can we say
that this curriculum is the most appropriate?

4. Is there any regional or global support mechanism for caregivers especially those
coming from developing country like my country?

5. Lack of or in most of the cases none of a hospice care to deliver palliative care for
people with life threatening illness

I say that hospices are vital to any care-giving. I know and I understand for a fact that
running a hospice is very expensive and there is no return of investment from here, but
with extreme cases where caring needs to be done on a venue where there are some
professional help ? it is very vital.

I condemn governments who say that hospice is not as vital as home based care. I know home
based is best but when in comes to situation where that caregivers are already hard up in
the delivery of care like for instance if the patient has lesions all over the body, then
this needs to be cared for in a hospice setting.

Also the issue of pain management, there are no available high-end pain relievers like
morphine or nubaine, and to some extent wish of the patient of euthanasia.

I wish that my points will be taken into consideration by others in this forum. I am dying
to hear from your experience.

Celina Castro
Philippines
Email: palliativerp@yahoo.ca

--
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