Even before COVID-19, turnover in the health care workforce was a concern. During the pandemic,...
Category: The Paid Perspective
Professional care workers find their careers meaningful and demanding. Many are subject to exploitative working conditions. Professional caregivers share their experiences and their vision of how to change the way care is provided.
Who Cares
Nurses must meet the complex and diverse needs of the people they care for—washing, dressing, meal...
#WeAllCare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAfEvHQ5ZNc Three amazing women share their caregiving stories....
7 Reasons Why We Need More Caregivers
There’s a rapidly growing shortage of paid and unpaid caregivers and nurses, which if left...
You are not your meat suit
Describing seniors as "cute" is demeaning. When you're designing for a cute little old lady,...
The Reason
You lost your reason this morning. You had known it was coming. For three days now, she hadn’t...
Moving In with Mom
My 100-year-old mom was heading for the bathroom, and that meant I was headed there too. Until...
The Last Human Job
An emerging consensus suggests that two characteristics make humans distinct from machines: care...
How did we become professional caregivers?
A few weeks ago we were talking about how we became caregivers on the Facebook page. I was...
For Caregivers Everywhere
I have bipolar disorder. My husband is my caregiver. He didn’t sign up for this gig when we met,...
Back Home, at Home
Great caregivers are as skilled as an anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist takes over the...
Blink once for yes
A family and their home health aids tells the story of their brother (and son) jumping off his...
Sallie Tisdale’s Quietly Groundbreaking Essays About Caring for Others
There is even a hierarchy among staff that determines how much emotion you are expected to show or...
Caring more than they do
You know what makes being the caregiver to a disabled adult (24 years old) suck so damn bad and...
The gift of a giggle
The other day, my daughter and I made pizza together. I bought some pizza dough in a tube which,...
Senior moments
On the night shift, someone was calling out in the dining room in the early morning. Old gent with...
Dirty work
I spoke with a doctor recently. No, it wasn’t concerning my health. He sat down to talk with me...
Bath time
I work as a Health Care Aide on the Geriatric Unit of a hospital and I always tell people how much...
The endless soliloquy of the interior paramour
This essay was written by Sybil Smith and originally published in the April 2015 issue of The Sun...
Jeff & Evelyn
So many professional caregivers become part of the family -- that's how Jeff and Evelyn are. When...
My life as a professional caregiver
...and the rewards that come with it In my previous article, I mentioned the challenges of being a...
My challenges as a professional caregiver
As an unemployed 22-year-old, I felt stuck. As a full-time student, I needed to find a full-time...
We Shouldn’t Have To Rearrange Our Lives To Provide At-Home Elder Care For Our Aging Parents
I remember, as a brand new bride, my new mother in law grasping my arm before I even left the...
What keeps me going
At the end of some days the job itself might leave me worn physically, mentally, emotionally or...