Caregiver Fatigue: What Can Be Done?
Caring for someone with a disability can be incredibly rewarding. This rewarding feeling is what keeps many caring professionals such as personal support workers, nurses, occupational therapists and others working at their jobs. Unfortunately, over time, stress, conflict with challenging patients, limited resources and heavy caseloads often cause these professionals to suffer from caregiver fatigue.
Caregiver fatigue can manifest itself in feelings of reduced empathy, anger, substance abuse, absenteeism, problems with intimacy and a diminished sense of enjoyment in one’s career. Caregiver Fatigue Specialist Françoise Mathieu notes that almost 20% of nurses in one recent study reported that their mental health had made their workload difficult during the previous month.
If compassion fatigue occurs so often to trained professionals like nurses, it is no wonder that many family members of severely injured people also suffer from compassion fatigue and burnout. What can be done to deal with this serious issue? First, make time to care for yourself. Try to find time for a massage, exercise or meditation. You aren’t doing your loved one any favours if you neglect your own needs entirely to make sure that he or she is cared for. Next, talk about how you are feeling.
Organizations exist to allow you to speak to others in a similar situation or to a professional who can help you process and deal with your emotions. Lastly, work with professionals to develop healthy strategies for dealing with your emotions. These may include accessing additional support to allow you to take a break or simply working with a professional to accept the things that you can’t change and to implement strategies to deal with the things that you can change.
In some cases, expert personal injury lawyers can help the injured person access insurance benefits that may reduce the load of the caregiver and even pay for counselling for the loved one who is providing the injured person with care. If you or a loved one has been seriously injured in an accident, speaking to a personal injury about your legal rights is an important first step.
