Professional Caregivers

Kurt Vonnegut once said, “We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

That’s your whole role as a professional carer. Sometimes it requires some professional skills you have been specifically trained for, but just as often it requires simple kindness and sensitivity – a smile, a gesture, a kind word, help with a task. It also requires you to know the life story, values, preferences, and personality quirks of the multiple people you serve – no small feat.

Informal caregivers are usually focused on a single person needing their care, most often a spouse or perhaps one or more elderly parents whom they presumably already know well. If they are part of the Sandwich Generation, they may also still be caring for children, and often they have a career, too. They are definitely pulled in multiple directions, but as a carer, the main person they are usually focused on is a single older adult.

As a professional caregiver, you are usually caring for multiple people with often complex (or at least varying) needs. You are also needing to meet the expectations of a boss and co-workers, and the families of all the people you are directly caring for. Some days you get the recognition, pay, and praise you deserve and need. Other days, they can all be unrealistically demanding and zap your energy, spirit, and last nerve.

Everything I’ve written on this website and in my books and courses applies to you. I cannot condense it all here, but I hope everything here does resonate with you. I especially hope you will take in the intended uplift of kindness and humor that is a part of all of it. You deserve it; you are deeply valued.