This paper addresses the care of elderly patients by their relatives and the role reversal that takes place in this care setting. It identifies and discusses the issue of elderly care, the impact of care on family members, social and community resources available to families facing the issue of taking care of elderly patients, and the role of the family nurse practitioner within this caregiving setting.
Family members and friends continue to provide the major portion of long-term care of the elderly in society (Burggraf, 1993, p. 25). More than 7 million American households are actively involved in providing care for older adults (Sharlach & Others, 1991, pp. xi-xvi). These households are part of the support for 5 million older Americans who require assistance with day-to-day tasks in order to remain in the community.
As the American population continues to age, the number of older persons with health impairments and associated dependencies grows. Consequently, the ranks of family caregivers whose assistance enables their elderly relatives to live in the community (i.e. outside of nursing homes) increases as well. The degenerative and irreversible course of old age, and its varied symptoms, typically results in family caregivers becoming increasingly engulfed by the needs of the impaired relatives. The time and energies of caregivers come to be consumed by this single enveloping role. Absorption into caregiving, of course, is often at the expense of the activities and relationships across which people's lives have previously been spread. Understandably, overwhelming circumstances may also result in isolation, a sense of being invisible in the larger society, and a conviction that no one "out there" understands or cares about the pain and suffering that goes with the caregiving.
For most people, assisting others when their needs are limited and transient is relatively easy. However, it is a different matter when the...