Positive Health Online

It’s 2:30 in the morning, and I’m apologizing to the carer who has just discovered that my sheet is wet and the whole bed needs changing. She has spent her shift going from one such scene to another. It’s a myth that they get accustomed to working nights: she looks as sleep-deprived as any of us would, if called to such a situation at this hour. My apology is met with a cheery “It’s my job!”

Her job is paid at minimum wage (at the time of writing, a little over £12 an hour), and involves sharing the responsibility – with one (or at most two) colleagues – for the physical care of about twenty patients in various stages of dementia and physical disability. She is on an hourly contract, which means that, if she takes time off sick, she doesn’t get paid at all.

https://pixabay.com/photos/hand-aged-care-sympathy-senior-3699825/

Hand, Aged, Care; Image by Siggy Nowak from Pixabay

Like all professional carers, she is required to take training courses in the safest ways of: lifting and turning people; transporting them in a hoist; managing those who may be confused and/or aggressive; and making judgements about the ethical dilemmas surrounding the care of resistant individuals who may endanger their own health through neglect. In addition, night-time carers may be asked to help out with laundry and cleaning. Carers are also contractually obliged to operate within the legal frameworks of: the Care Act 2014, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards 2009, and the Health and Safety (Sharp Instruments in Healthcare) Regulations 2013. It can now be seen that, in the daily course of their professional practice, carers may be caught between the conflicting responsibilities of (for example) respecting clients’ dignity and freedom of choice, while avoiding the sometimes serious consequences of neglecting personal hygiene. (For that reason, lives can come to depend on how well carers understand the principles of infection control!)

To sum up thus far: the job of a professional carer is physically gruelling, emotionally draining, ethically challenging, badly paid, and culturally disrespected. Yet this carer – like most of her colleagues – has chosen it because she’d rather take care of people than do anything else. Indeed, she will take care of me until I die; will grieve my passing, and that of each one in her care.

However much I am loved by others, it is her skills and her empathy that will determine the quality of my remaining days and my nights. And yet her pay and conditions will be decided by middle aged people, mostly men, at the height of their health and power, who can’t even imagine themselves in need of such care. Their need, and their understanding, will come long after their days of influence have passed.

So much for “All they do is wipe people’s asses! How hard can it be?”