Thursday Thirteen: 13 Reasons Family Caregivers Should Be Paid The Same As A Nurse

13 Reasons Family Caregivers Should
Be Paid The Same As A Nurse

1. Family Caregivers can not work outside the home, and not everyone is able to run a business out of their home. Those that can run a business from their home often can not even make minimum wage.

2. Family Caregivers give everything they have to care for their care recipient and end up neglecting their own medical needs because they can not afford to see a doctor/optometrist/dentist/etc

3. Chances are you will be a family caregiver, or know someone close to you that will be or already is, and you will need help too.

4. Family caregivers right now can not even be credited with deemed wages for caregiver service toward their Social Security, leaving millions of caregivers with inadequate Social Security coverage for their own retirements. (H.R. 1161 hopes to change that)

5. Caregivers are under a great deal of stress from things such as overdue bills and trying to find the money to pay medical expenses. Stress is one of the primary problems that leads to burnout which can cause a caregiver to become neglectful and in extreme cases verbally and even physically abusive (something I had thought only non-family caregivers were guilty of until I did some more digging).

6. Caregivers rarely have any time to themselves, and when they do have some time to themselves they often can not afford simple luxuries others take for granted such as going to the salon, to a movie, or out for coffee at a cafe.

7. Family Caregivers give up so much, including their careers, and ask for nothing in return but the ability to provide the best care that can for their care recipient.

8. Many care recipients cared for by family caregivers today are the few survivors of WWII. Don't those men and women deserve to be given the best possible care?

9. Many family caregivers have no savings, many more are expending what they did have to provide care for their loved one.

10. Despite all the claims that you can get powered wheel chairs for little or no money, they will drag you through so many chaotic loops that you can not even remember what is a circle and what is a figure eight, even though you know you already did what they are demanding, and then you still don't get the chair - they try to put you in one that costs thousands of dollars *AFTER* they have the care recipient all excited about how much better their lives will be with a powered chair. If Family Caregivers were paid as a nurse they would be in a better position to get the powered chair and prevent the care recipient getting depressed at not having the thing that the commercials and people at the chair places say would make them like they were before they needed a wheel chair.

11. Non-family members can be paid several thousand dollars a month to go into a care recipient's home and do one tenth of the stuff that a family caregiver does. The family caregiver currently can not even get a few dollars to help their loved one out.

12. Urinals, soiled bedsheets, sick care recipients, working 365 days a year every year (366 on Leap year) without holidays or even your birthday off, waking up all hours of the night and being on call 24/7, knowing to the dosage level every medication taken by the care recipient off the top of your head but unable to remember what you walked into a room for, tracking appointments, personal hygiene and grooming and dressing of another adult... the list goes on through so many things that caregivers do, most of which even the most dedicated of full-time nurses will not do.

13. Full-time for a nurse is 40 hours a week. Full-time for a family caregiver is 168 hours a week. Shouldn't a family caregiver at least be able to be paid as a nurse for 40 of those 168 hours?

Family Caregiver is the highest stress unpaid job in the world

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