Humans in Healthcare #25 | The caregivers among us

In case you missed it, I announced the early launch of the next chapter of Humans in Healthcare — a (lightly) paid community. This first iteration is specifically for clinicians in transition (work, career stage, life), clinician creators, and clinicians needing peer connection and a place of empowerment. Click to read more and take advantage of special pricing for early members.

Recently, the incredible Brandy Wilkins, PT, DPT, CPHQ was kind enough to host me for a conversation. Listen to hear my story in healthcare and beyond and hear more about my plans for the community. And be sure to connect with Brandy!

Sonia Basuroy takes us on her journey of becoming a caregiver to her parents as her parents did before her. She shares about life before and after and lessons learned to share with other caregivers.

✍️ Sonia writes:

I know all too well the hardships families go through when they become caregivers.  My mom did the same for her parents, as my children may do for me someday. My suggestion is to have a mindset of patience and love, not resentment. This isn’t their fault, aging is a part of life. I never feel or want to feel resentment, rather this is the right thing to do. That makes a huge difference even during the toughest times.

May Parell knows that one day she might be the primary caregiver for her brother, Max, who has Down Syndrome. May shares her experience growing up with a brother with special needs and how she is hoping to revolutionize caregiving for others like her.

✍️ May writes:

It was easy to take care of Max when he was young and in school. The challenge is — what happens after that? What happens when his classmates go away to college? What happens when they graduate college and move away to begin their journeys and lives? What happens when days filled with school, events & sports come to an end?

May and I share an experience of growing up with a sibling with special needs as my brother Jesse also has Down Syndrome, as well as Autism.

Growing up with a special needs sibling is something I often can’t put into words as May so wonderfully did. If I could say anything to help us be seen, here is what it would be: the acknowledgment of the strong tension of both grief and love.

We love them deeply for who they are — and we grieve them too. The tension of both love and grief simultaneously can be extraordinarily heavy, but the burden is light.

For those of us who grew up with a sibling with special needs and caregiving is how we’ve lived, I want you to know that I see you:

It’s ok to love them for who they are, perfectly in their own skin. It’s ok to celebrate their life as it is, perfectly their own. It’s ok to grieve the life they didn’t have and never will. And the life you didn’t have and never will. It's ok.

The tension of both love and grief can be heavy, but the burden is light.

It’s never too late to grieve, even in perfect love.

There is a rise of companies building in the caregiving space and today, I’m highlighting an incredible one, Givers Health.  

Givers Health is a company focused on scaling care at home by enabling family caregivers to become a high-value member of the care team through training, support, and pay. It is founded and led by Tara English, who has lived experience as a caregiver to her ailing father.

✍️ Tara writes:

I started Givers Health because of the work I did at Kaiser Permanente. I was on technology projects moving care from hospital facilities to the home — so things like remote patient monitoring and virtual visits. I was calling patients to see how the programs were going and noticed that over half the time, they were handing me off to someone else like a nephew or adult daughter. I realized that our success in the home was completely dependent on informal caregivers, and we had no scalable way of engaging with them. It's a big and complicated problem that's outside the core model of health systems, so it also felt like something I needed to solve outside of Kaiser.

The approach of Givers Health is informed by my own experience in caregiving. When I was a teenager, my dad had heart failure and I lived alone with him for many years. I was very involved in his care but no one ever told me what I should be doing to support him — not clinicians, not adults, not him. Only after he died did I realize all the things I should have been doing, and that I may have had more years with him if I'd done things differently. It's something I can never change, and one of those regrets that still makes me cry and wakes me up in the middle of the night. It's what brought me to healthcare in the first place. I hope we can help others get through caregiving without regrets.

Through Givers Health, the caregiver gets a training plan customized to the patient’s care plan, the caregiver’s skill gaps, and what is clinically important for readmissions and outcomes.

The training aspect of Tara’s mission is paramount to caregivers feeling supported and empowered because this is often missing from the healthcare system today. How do you care for someone when you don’t understand the medical terminology, have appropriate training, or have the resources to do so? Tara aims to solve this through her mission.

In addition, caregivers get wrap-around support with dedicated access to experts and peers as well as compensation for training and tasks related to caregiving.

When building in healthcare, it is imperative to focus on clinically driven and quality outcomes. Givers is focused on improving outcomes for patients, specifically through:

• Fall risk reduction: Patients with family caregiver support have been associated with a 54% reduction in risk of falls.

• Increased medication adherence: Patients who receive assistance from family caregivers have reported a 25% increase in medication adherence.

• Increased satisfaction: Care recipients receiving support from a trained family caregiver report a 2x higher quality of life rating, and caregivers report a 1.5x higher rating

Click here to learn more about Givers Health, schedule a demo, or contact the team: