COVID-19 crisis throws caregiver role into uncertainty
Family caregivers have been excluded from their duties during this pandemic due to restrictions and one organization is calling on hospitals, medical facilities, and longterm care facilities to include caregivers in a patient’s healthcare team.
Due to increased safety protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, many health care facilities have restricted — or completely banned — visitors. Caregivers4Change is concerned that these restrictions are being extended to the caregivers, which they say violates the rights of the patient and caregiver to play an active role in care and decisions affecting their health.
“A family caregiver plays a super important role,” says Dr. Daren Heyland, a Kingston, Ont.- based critical care physician and author of Plan Well Guide for critical illness. “Sometimes in providing direct hands- on care, not administering medication necessarily but certainly helping them mobilize, eat, maintain their dignity.
“In some instances where that person no longer has competency to make medical decisions, that family member needs to be the decision maker. When you’re not able to access [ the patient] and be with them and be a part of that … that contributes to suffering.”
Allowing caregivers into facilities to tend to their family members may be risky — especially if the patient in question has COVID-19. However, they may be critical to ensuring every patient receives proper care.
Long-term care homes have been heavily scrutinized this summer as death rates in some facilities across the country skyrocketed. An investigation by the Canadian military into five Ontario long-term care homes resulted in a scathing report, including repeated incidences where staff used medical equipment without it first being disinfected, staff being aggressive towards patients, and presence of insects such as cockroaches in these homes.
“This pandemic has exposed weaknesses in our health care system resulting in egregious and unconscionable harm to Canadian patients by restricting and often excluding family caregivers from the bedside where they could fully participate in care,” says the full declaration by Caregivers4Change.
Recently, Ontarians with residents of long- term care homes were given the option to list two caregivers who will be permitted to access the home in the event of a COVID outbreak at the facility. Caregivers are expected to play a crucial role in the coming months as many facilities face staff shortages.
Allowing caregivers into the facilities, however, is not without risks. To protect the staff, residents, and the general population from COVID, caregivers will need to be trained on proper PPE precautions and provided an adequate plan B should entrance to a facility become unreasonably dangerous.
“Healthcare system leaders have a duty to provide us with the technology, training, and equipment required for us to exercise our rights,” says Heyland. “When separated by distance and out of necessity, we call upon health care system decisionmakers to utilize current technologies and make available the staff necessary to enable us to stay connected to our family member and receive information from their clinical teams in a timely and efficient manner.”
The full declaration and petition by Caregivers4Change are available online at www.caregivers4change.com.