The Case Management Nurses of the Health Area of Lanzarote have trained caregivers and family members of the elderly and dependents during the month of May in order to improve their quality of life and facilitate person-centered care. Within the training program, they have developed the workshop Taking Care with You in which more than thirty people from all over the island have participated.
The initiative seeks to empower people who are in charge of caring for a family member and professional caregivers to provide them with fundamental knowledge to improve care and facilitate the relationship between health professionals, the patient and their family. The sessions that made up this workshop addressed topics such as the care of nutrition, sleep hygiene, the psychological perspective, the so-called caregiver syndrome and end-of-life decisions.
This type of workshop, in addition to providing citizens with training spaces in the prevention and management of health and providing family members and caregivers with tools to improve the quality of life of both, offers a space for emotional support to caregivers and constitutes a forum to share experiences and concerns around care.
Food and Rest
The workshop included the participation of the Internal Resident nurses of Geriatrics, Anaís Rodríguez and Alba Gómez, who addressed in their sessions the peculiarities of sleep in the elderly, as well as the most frequent problems and the importance of rest.
In this sense, they tried to give guidelines to caregivers to improve the sleep hygiene of the elderly and people in their care and reminded them of the general measures that can usually be taken to facilitate rest while transmitting security. The health professionals emphasize that "poor sleep quality in the people they care for has negative repercussions on the caregivers and, in addition, significantly affects their quality of life".
On the other hand, regarding the care of nutrition, the residents of Geriatric Nursing Laura Lorenzo and Cristina Lemos addressed the daily consumption needs of vitamins, proteins, minerals and antioxidants required by the elderly and paid special attention to common problems and complications such as choking, dehydration, weight loss, malnutrition or dysphagia.
Caregiver Syndrome
The Primary Care psychologist Ángel Hernández addressed in the workshop the so-called caregiver syndrome, which consists of the physical and emotional exhaustion that can even lead to burnout derived from the time spent caring for the elderly or dependents and that has physical and psychological consequences on caregivers.
In this sense, he recalled the importance of the caregiver not forgetting himself and his personal needs, so at some point he can request support from the family group or public social services or home help as a way to prevent and alleviate the overload.
For their part, nurses Victoria Castañeyra and Encarna Nicolás gave the attendees a talk on end-of-life decisions in which they insisted on the need to talk and involve the different members of the family in the wishes in the final moments of life and in the benefits of actively participating in those decisions, both for the patient and for their family.
