It should be stated first that a carer or a caregiver is a person helping another individual with his particular casual activities of daily living. The caregiver may do this on a paid basis or voluntarily without any payment for his service. In other words, a person with particular health impairment can use these services in order to address their limited functioning due to their health issues. Caregiving is widely used to address the following impairments: associated with disease, disability, both physiological and mental, and related to old age (Aga, Nikkonen & Kylmä).
However, despite the direct positive effects of caregiving, the care-receiver might appear socially, psychologically and physiologically dependent upon the caregiver. It is worth stating that care-receiver and caregiver tend to disagree about many issues and questions related to the caregiving processes and level of knowledge of caregiver and its ability to satisfy the care-receiver needs at the minimum risk possible (Bar-Tal, Barnoy and Zisser). For example, the caregivers emphasized upon the importance of care-receiver’s security and well-being, while the last highlighted their independence as a vital factor in caregiving process. The care-receivers tend to complain about the overprotectiveness and their embarrassment of their status and attitude towards them.
In other words, it appears more than important to design and adapt the caregiving approach according to specific physiological, psychological and social needs of the individual receiving this care. It is necessary to find a balance between the care-receiver’s safety and wellbeing and his own feeling of independence and pride of being an alive person. Therefore, a personalized program of caregiving should be implemented for each person requesting caregiving services in order to both be beneficial for care-receiver and easy for caregiver.
The process of caregiving is also closely connected with grief because of the caregiver’s awareness that he will lose care-giver because of the health status of the last. In this regard, grief is the emotional response of a person undergoing a negative experience. As for bereavement, is a period of grief resulted by a death of the beloved person. The consequences of grief for older adults appear to be more severe compared to the younger people that can adapt to changes in their life and react to death less sensitively. For elders, they tend to feel more isolated even having their family around, along with social deviation resulted by their physical peculiarities resulted by their age (Hall).
Works Cited
Aga, Fekadu, Merja Nikkonen, and Jari Kylmä. "Caregiving Actions: Outgrowths Of The Family Caregiver's Conceptions Of Care". Nursing & Health Sciences 16.2 (2013): 149-156. Web.
Bar-Tal, Yoram, Sivia Barnoy, and Bracha Zisser. "Whose Informational Needs Are Considered? A Comparison Between Cancer Patients And Their Spouses’ Perceptions Of Their Own And Their Partners’ Knowledge And Informational Needs". Social Science & Medicine 60.7 (2005): 1459-1465. Web.
Hall, Christopher. "Bereavement Theory: Recent Developments In Our Understanding Of Grief And Bereavement". Bereavement Care 33.1 (2014): 7-12. Web.
