Caregiving
Caregivers include parents, spouses, neighbors, partners, friends, and adult children who provide support and help to people with severe health conditions. The various types of caregiving always involve taking care of people living in the same household, people living in the same neighborhood, or people who live far away.
Compound caregiving refers to instances where a lifelong caregiver takes other caregiving roles. Permanent provision of care always requires caregivers to take care of their sick members in their entire life. An example includes a parent of intellectually disabled children for their whole lifetime.
Respite refers to the provision of temporary relief to a primary caregiver to enable them to take some breaks from caregiving. Caregiving requires a lot of effort, time, and commitment by the caregivers, which makes it such a demanding job. Respite helps ease the burden of caregiving from a single person and helps in restoring their energy.
Adult daycare provides care recipients with a safe and friendly environment where they can interact with their peers and receive medical care. Adult daycare always operates based on the regular business hours to allow primary caregivers some relief period.
Care coordination refers to deliberately organizing the activities of patient care between the caregivers and the patient to facilitate effective health care service delivery. It involves communication and information sharing to provide safe and effective care.
The difference between informal and formal caregiving is that formal caregivers get paid while informal caregivers receive no pay. Both formal and informal caregivers provide critical support for the patients. Significant evidence shows that formal caregiving has replaced informal caregiving in modern society (Arthur, 2018). It is because of the demanding nature of caregiving, which makes most communities opt for formal caregivers to take care of their sick members.
Positive aging involves the provision of care and companionship for the aging population since human beings are social creatures. It helps give them support so that they do not feel lonely or scared in their sunset days. Provision of patient care for the terminally ill elderly members and promoting active and healthy lifestyles among the elderly will lead to positive results of the aging process.
References
Arthur, P. B. (2018). Informal Caregiving for Persons with Chronic Conditions: Trends and Considerations. Advances in Aging Research, 7(4), 78-89.