In a recent article from the Star Tribune, reporter Warren Wolfe dug deep into the issues that can arise while caring for elderly loved ones. The article features Dr. Robert Kane, a physician who heads the U of M Center on Aging. Kane was so frustrated with the problems he and his sister faced after caring for their aging mom that he wrote a book about the long-term care system.
Advocate on Aging Deborah Dolan shared her thoughts on the article and Kane’s work. “Dr. Kane expresses beautifully from personal experience the essence of a geriatric care manager,” said Deborah. “He speaks well of the advocacy a strong, knowledgeable GCM can provide to elders and their family. Even in the best of circumstances when you are an adult child of an aging parent providing the daily love and support they need can be “grueling,” and a geriatric care manager can help.”
Deborah had the privilege of meeting with Dr. Kane several years ago as she was growing her geriatric care management business, and he spoke of his experience with his mother. He had formed the on-line support group and found that he had many colleagues in a similar position of caregiving as he and his sister. Deborah was not sure if he was promoting his number one lesson just yet, but she is glad to know the importance of a GCM has found a prominent position on his list of lessons learned.
For Kane’s work, Deborah is appreciative. “Thank you, Dr. Kane, for your support both as a care manager and as a volunteer with the Senior Linkage Line. An additional resource of the Minnesota Board on Aging is www.minnesotahelp.info , ‘an online directory of services designed to help people in Minnesota find human services, information and referral, financial assistance, and other forms of help’ (taken from the website). It is a wonderful point of beginning when families are ready to take the first step in finding help for their aging loved ones.”
Happy New Year! The holidays can be a fun time to visit grandparents and family members. Now that children have been home they are realizing that their elders have changed quite a bit. Listen to your intuition and take a look at what changes have occurred. Even the smallest issues such as scratches on the car, problems with the cooking, unusual odors can be a view of what is to come. Deborah Dolan, Advocate on Aging and Kevyn Burger, host of the show, discuss elder care and aging through different stages of life and transitions.
Links from Podcast:
MNHelp.info – The Minnesota Board on Aging’s help for Minnesota Residents.
The driving… they keys… these are both attached to an emotional piece of the elderly person. There is a time that comes when elderly caregivers will have to have the conversation about whether to allow seniors to keep driving. This is a hard topic to talk about but Deborah Dolan, Advocate on Aging and Kevyn Burger, host of the show, discuss options for caregivers and resources to test the driving ability of seniors.
Links from Podcast:
Courage Center – driver assessment and training for seniors.
MSBNC Video – National Transportation Safety Board held a forum on aging drivers in November . Now there is a way for people to experience what it is like to be an older driver.
According to an announcement from PRNewswire.com, a new addition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act reveals that an annual wellness benefit will be provided for all qualifying Medicare beneficiaries beginning January 2011. This new benefit includes a “detection of cognitive impairment” that will be a mandatory part of the annual wellness visit. This screening can help detect early stages of devastating diseases that affect mental functioning, such dementia and Alzheimer’s.
The report emphasizes the great impact that this new addition will have on patients because the first wave of baby boomers will soon be turning 65 years of age.
“The spouse or caregiver of an aging person usually detects changes in cognitive functioning first and most often dismisses the changes as ‘getting older’ or ‘insignificant’. If you are a caregiver for an elderly person, make sure that you remain aware of that person’s mental functioning in order to detect signs of cognitive impairment,” said Deborah Dolan, Advocate on Aging. “Early detection is the best way to keep your loved ones safe so that they can get the help that they need as soon as possible. Ask a physician to screen elderly patients for cognitive impairment if you see any of the 10 warning signs of Alzheimer’s or other related dementias. It’s quick, non-invasive and will provide a baseline for future testing.”
Deborah Dolan, Advocate on Aging and Kevyn Burger, host of the show, discuss the infamous “family meetings” and the role a facilitator can have in these meetings. They will talk about the hard questions to ask, help for making the decisions on choosing a power of attorney, health care power of attorney and what other decisions need to be made before a crisis situation would arise.
Links from Podcast:
Honoring Choices Minnesota - a collaborative, community-wide public health initiative led by the Twin Cities Medical Society. The goal of Honoring Choices Minnesota (HCM) is to promote discussions about end of life choices and to assist health care organizations with the installation of a comprehensive advance care planning program.
DNR Order(Do Not Resuscitate) – can also be called a living will, indicates whether you would like heroic measures to be taken if your heart should fail.
POH – Physician’s order for life sustaining treatments
We’ve been hearing so much about health care reform how is it effecting the elderly population? Deborah Dolan and Kevyn Burger discuss the health care reform, changes in Medicare, the “donut hole”, resources for more information and help.
Links from Podcast:
Senior LinkAge Line – 1-800-333-2433
Free to call! The Senior LinkAge Line® can help simplify the complex issues and decisions you face every day as a senior, Baby Boomer, Medicare beneficiary, caregiver or someone trying to reduce their prescription drug costs.
Advocate on Aging Deborah Dolan’s job is to facilitate conversations about care giving between families and loved ones – not control it. She is simply included in order to start and direct discussions, especially when it comes to difficult topics such as legal issues, death and dying. Certain topics are typically more difficult to discuss without a neutral facilitator, such as assigning powers to designated individuals. Deborah stresses to her clients that every caregiver should know the differences between a general power of attorney, and a healthcare power of attorney. Here’s what you need to know when it comes to these powers:
A fiduciary or general power of attorney is in place to handle financial assets including property, money, life insurance, and investments. Whether a person needs to have property sold to pay for their care, have bank accounts changed in any way, the assigned general power of attorney has the same ability to handle all financial transactions that the owner of the asset has. It is important to remember that this power ends with the death of the person granting the power, and the executor of the estate takes over. Deborah sees some clients, who are afraid to designate a power of attorney because they fear losing control over their assets, or that someone will take their money and they won’t have it when they need it. Deborah facilitates these discussions in order to help the elder and their families address these issues before the powers or information is needed and not in crisis. Although Deborah is not an attorney, she is able to refer her clients to attorneys and recommends that an attorney assist in writing this document.
A healthcare power of attorney is usually included in a healthcare directive and designates an individual who, in Deborah’s words, “gives voice to the wishes of how a person wants to live and how he or she wants to die.” This healthcare power of attorney agrees that if the person giving the power becomes ill or incapacitated and is unable to speak, they will honor and direct that person’s care as written to the best of his or her ability. Unlike the financial power of attorney, a healthcare power of attorney and directive does not have to have an attorney involved. There are resources available online which are legally binding and honored when the signature of the person assigning the power is notarized or witnessed by two non-interested parties. Two such forms are Five Wishes and Honoring Choices Minnesota.
There is much to do and many decisions to make when a health crisis occurs. Giving the gift of information needed to carry out personal wishes when you are no longer able to speak for yourself is a gift of love and peace.
Aging Advocate Deborah Dolan & host Kevyn Burger discuss aging for members of the GLBT community and how they are effected. Deborah has moderated panels for the GLBT community to discuss aging issues, housing, caregiving resources, etc. The biggest fear Deborah hears for GLBT community members is the fear of not receiving adequate care in living facilities as they age. Training To Serve is working to take care of that issue by providing training to help service providers meet the needs of the GLBT comunity and it’s members.
In working with seniors, one size definitely does not fit all; applying simplified, generalized practices to all seniors is ineffective. It is necessary to provide specialized training to caretakers so they are prepared to fully serve the needs of all elderly individuals. One organization found this to be especially true when serving senior members of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) community.
In 2007 a collaboration among the Metropolitan Area Agency on Aging, GLBT Generations, University of Minnesota researchers, and other community supporters conducted a survey to assess how prepared service providers are to work with this community. It was concluded that agencies are not adequately prepared to serve older GLBT individuals, but that the agencies have a great interest in learning new skills to be able to do so. Thus Training to Serve was founded. TTS is an organization designed to assist local providers of aging services with the education and tools to help them meet the needs of GLBT persons as they age and begin to seek services,.
Their mission is simple: “assisting senior service providers with training and resources to ensure Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) persons are able to achieve a satisfying quality of life in later years.” Their mission doesn’t sound too difficult or too much to expect, but many GLBT seniors fear it won’t be their aging experience.
TTS is located in St. Paul, MN. To learn more about TTS, click here to visit the organization’s website.
Caregivers who regard their duties as highly stressful may be at increased risk for stroke. Published in the journal Stroke, the study examined 767 people who were responsible for providing in-home care for a sick husband or wife.
The caregivers who said tending to their spouse caused “a lot of strain” were 23% more likely to have a stroke compared with their caregiving counterparts who said they felt no strain regarding their responsibilities.
The study found that the stroke risk was most pronounced among men.
“Highly stressful caregiving can include many difficult and uncontrollable stressors such as witnessing the suffering of a loved one, managing stressful behavior problems, financial strain, social isolation, and providing physically and psychologically demanding personal care tasks,” write the researchers, led by William E. Haley, PhD of the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Do you have a question that you want answered? Click the help button below and email your question to the Advocate on Aging, Deborah Dolan! Your question will be posted on the blog anonymously with an answer, allowing other to comment and ask for more information on a variety of topics. Thank you for sharing!
