The home is the most intimate setting to receive healthcare. Caregivers (clinicians; we are all caregivers, one to another) who go into a person’s home to provide care, enter as stranger and quickly become relied upon as a trusted support to the person in need.
Increasingly elderly people lack the necessary support to live safely at home. When caregivers experience moral distress due to extremely difficult patient circumstances they reach out for help and guidance.
Often there are no easy answers.
It is astonishing to witness what people will endure rather than relinquish their independence.
Chaos accompanies change.
Dramas unfold in daily life. What character do we play in our stories? Are we the hero or scoundrel, an angel or fiend, generous or stingy, kind or uncaring, victim or attacker, a good Samaritan or would we rather cross to the other side of the road?
Dedicated caregivers go to great lengths to be of help.
I know many stories of caregivers going above and beyond to respond to people in dire need, often at their own expense; giving of their time, energy and personal resources. Yet, these kind gestures provide only temporary relief because they do not address systemic issues.
The heart wrenching dilemma is when we reach a crossroad and have to ask ourselves; is our limited support enabling an unsafe situation or do we walk away and risk abandonment?
People have the right to self- determination.
We strive to accompany the most vulnerable, to do what is right, to honor human dignity and offer compassion to the person in need rather than avert our eyes and cross to the other side.
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
~Maya Angelou
Liz Sorensen Wessel
Watercolor by ~liz
