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Seeking Better Ideas for Caregiving
In 2004 the increasing frailty of my parents dramatically changed my life. After 28 years working in the New York metro area (first in the arts and later in bleeding edge software development), I moved to Dallas, Texas, where I grew into my role as primary family caregiver, a role I maintained for the succeeding seven years. As I learned about caregiving, I changed my career trajectory to address problems I experienced, and committed myself to figuring out better ways of aging for my parents’ generation, their children, and their children’s children.
Like every other caregiver I have ever met, I was not prepared. When I began to look for help I stumbled and scrambled for solutions until I eventually learned enough to manage competently. Recognizing how poorly equipped we are as a society to meet the needs of 78 million aging baby boomers I began a quest for “Better Ideas for Aging.” ElderAuthority.com was founded as a way to collect and share best practices as well as challenge readers to develop and contribute new and better solutions for the problems that are in danger of overwhelming us.
Meeting Basic Family Caregiving Needs
When I realized that caregiving basics could be taught I designed and taught seminars as well as a full semester class on eldercare planning. For those classes, not finding tools that met my own caregiving needs, I designed a series of Excel spreadsheets to record essential information. Data collected included the following:
- Important personal information such as Social Security Number, insurance policy information, blood type, personal contacts
- Current and past medications
- Insurance information
- Medical history
- Family health history
- Bank accounts
- Location of important documents
- Passwords
- Contact info for key professionals such as doctors, accountant, banker, attorney
I used these sheets to record my parents’ information and took the sheets with me to all their appointments. I also used the sheets to capture my own information and kept it in a red folder by the front door. When I broke my ankle, I only remembered to grab my purse and that red folder on my way out the door to the hospital.
Discarding Unsatisfactory Solutions
At that time no one in my family was using a smartphone and “The Cloud” had not been christened yet. My system worked as long as I had the discipline to keep information updated.
I found the challenge (time and energy sap) of keeping my four siblings in the loop more exhausting. Each call and email contained similar types of information, but everyone wanted to discuss, analyze, recommend, worry out loud, and drain my emotions.
How I wished I had a better system. Periodically some new product would hit the market, but they all seemed just as much trouble as my paper system. The biggest challenge with any shared technology was that my family members were all reluctant to communicate in any way except the telephone.
This week, a girlfriend was sharing her trials and tribulations as the on-site caregiver for her mother. She recommended I check out a new social networking tool that she and her brothers were using to provide shared support.
I believe that with this product, CareZone, technology has finally caught up with one of the critical needs of modern day caregivers.
CareZoning Into Modern Day Eldercare
CareZone solves four critical problems with which caregivers have struggled: Privacy, Shared Access, Shared Accountability, and Ease of Use.
It offers the following features:
- Journal: Share thoughts with other stakeholders.
- Uploaded Files: Share any kind of document with others on the team, with separate security for each file.
- To Do’s: Caregiving doesn’t get done without check lists. Even better, the lists help share the accountability for who does what.
- Helpers: Nope, you cannot do it alone. Don’t even try. It will literally kill you. If you don’t have helpers, it is time you found them.
- Calendar: Everyone who needs to know knows when things are scheduled…and who is accountable.
- Notes: Good place for instructions or any other information you want to keep and share.
- Contacts: Everyone needs access to the same list of essential contacts. Enter information once and only update it when a new person joins the discussion or team.
- Medications: Medications change all the time. Every member of the team needs to be able to view the list up on a smart phone or print it before visiting any medical practitioner.
CareZone: Harbinger of Hope for Eldercare (Part 2) provides a detailed look at why this is a breakthrough product.
The post CareZone: Eldercare Harbinger of Hope (Part 1) appeared first on ElderAuthority.com.