Five Reasons Caregiving Can Make You Crazy

Caregiving can make you crazy. Caregiver duties for healthcare professionals are never quite finished. There’s always something else to do. More unfinished duties. Caregiver stress and burnout are common. Whether you are a doctor, nurse, certified nursing assistant, physical therapist, or another healthcare professional, your days can be filled with stress.

Then after leaving work, you have other caregiving duties to complete for your husband or wife, children, and maybe even an aging parent.

Caregiving can make you crazy. Caregiver duties for healthcare professionals are never quite finished. There’s always something else to do. More unfinished duties.

Professional caregiver stress and burnout are common. Whether you are a doctor, nurse, certified nursing assistant, physical therapist, or another healthcare professional, your days can feel stressful and never-ending.

Then after leaving work, you have other caregiving duties to complete for your husband or wife, children, and maybe even an aging parent.

1 Working With People

Working with patients or clients who have health care needs requires that you be on the best behavior. This includes maintaining the right temperament, extreme patience and empathy, high attention to detail, and charming social skills. You know what it takes. You get it done because these are the most important people you work with all day.

Then, on the other hand, there are co-workers, suppliers, vendors, colleagues, and others who may be working on your last nerve. Co-workers who don’t pull their weight. Their lack of action results in more work for you. There’s the co-worker who keeps making the same mistake that you have to correct. The other co-worker who is always late to work. The employee who is not the supervisor stays quiet. Inside, there is an explosion ready to happen—like the lid blowing off the top of a pressure cooker.

2 You Feel That Your Supervisor Is Clueless or Burned Out

There is a saying that employees don’t quit their jobs; they quit their supervisors. The relationship between a supervisor and an employee is the glue that holds the company together. Outside causes like family and personal problems hurt a supervisor-employee relationship. These are also reasons that employees quit their jobs.

For a supervisor-employee relationship to succeed the relationship must be a two-way exchange. As an employee, you have the right to tell your supervisor how he or she can help you including what training you feel you need. Your supervisor has the same right to tell you about performance gaps and where you can improve. Feedback, if given in the right manner, can be beneficial in both directions.

Supervisors also have supervisors. They face the same performance struggles as employees. Realizing that we are all human and make mistakes is important to avoid the feeling that your supervisor doesn’t have a clue. More than likely, your supervisor is under pressures that you can’t even imagine.

Working Together As a Team

When we can work together as a team, working in a crazy caregiving environment can be invigorating instead of draining. How nice would it be to have a supervisor who leads by example and does whatever it takes to get the job done? Would seeing this type of behavior make an employee want to go the extra mile?

How about a thank you now and then? How many times do employees thank supervisors? How many times is appreciation shared? Being appreciative works both ways, always be thankful for others trying to be helpful.

Improving Communication Skills

Asking questions and actively listening are two skills that can make a significant difference. I once had an employee to whom I felt I was giving good instructions, and the results were repeatedly not what I expected.

After a long conversation with the employee, there was an admission that this person was looking for more context or background and was trying to guess what I wanted. This guessing resulted in outcomes that did not match my request.

I am direct. I ask for what I want. There is no hidden meaning or hidden information behind anything that I say. No reason to guess or second guess. What I say is what I mean. After having this conversation, the employee’s performance improved, and there were no issues of clarity.

When communication is confusing the next step is to ask for clarification by repeating understanding of the request. That solves many miscommunication problems between supervisors and employees and crosses over to communication skills with clients and patients.

3 Balancing Caregiving At Work And At Home

Individuals who work in healthcare are usually caring individuals. Having a caring nature means that in some way they are a caregiver at work and a caregiver outside of work.

The role of caregiving outside of work may be for children, a spouse, pets, aging parents, grandparents, or others. It seems there is always someone who needs help. Being helpful is the nature of being a caregiver.

Because of wanting to be helpful, the lives of caregivers often become imbalanced. Caregivers find it difficult to ask for help, challenging to say no, and nearly impossible to set boundaries.

Caregivers have a blind spot about the importance of self-care. Caregiving stress results in caregivers becoming ill, unable to work, and unable to take care of a loved one. Caregivers take care of others to their own detriment, meaning that they cause damage to their own health and well-being.

Rather than feeling like caregiving is crazy like all control is being lost, is it possible to look at caregiving differently? How might you balance caregiving, work, and home?

4 Rarely Enough Training

Lacking the right skills to do a job can make any professional caregiver feel uncomfortable. Few people in the workplace are so skilled that they do not, or would not, benefit from more training.

We all have skill gaps. Having a skill gap is no reason for embarrassment. Identifying the goal and then developing a path to close the gap means progress toward gaining more confidence. What are the other steps you might take?

Let’s say that a co-worker is good at having a supplier deliver goods on time, and you struggle with this task. Ask the co-worker to show you what he or she does and follow by example.

Few people will refuse to help when asked. No one can read minds to see that another person needs help. Asking for help is a strength, not a weakness.

5 Feeling Like No One Cares As Much As You Do

Feeling like no one cares as much as we do is a caregiving trap. Family caregivers refuse to take time off because they have the belief that no one else will be able to care for mom or dad like the caregiver.

While it may be true that the caregiver has exceptional skills, caregivers need a break, or the caregiver will break down. No one is indispensable. Tasks and processes can be learned.

Professionals in the workplace also feel like no one cares as much. They feel as if no one else works as hard. If this is your situation, feel blessed.

Feel blessed that you have better skills and greater abilities, and that you can run circles around your co-workers. Have an attitude of gratitude. Then quickly shift to an attitude of service. Start helping your co-workers close their skill gaps by asking how you can help.

You may quickly learn that your co-workers do care. Co-workers need someone to care about them and to make an offer of help. When we feel that someone cares enough to take an interest and in making the time to help us, we will learn that others do care as much as we do.

Caregiving as a Job Is Crazy

If you are a professional caregiver who loves your job, accept that caregiving is crazy. The unexpected becomes the norm. Triage situations become manageable; the more responding to emergencies becomes second nature. There will always be more duties and increasing responsibilities.

Be glad that your work and your life have meaning. There are many people who go to work each day and find little meaning or joy in their jobs. Be glad and rejoice in your ability to help others in need. Be blessed.

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