"We are on the Same Boat":Personal and Community Level Benefits of Female Long-term Family Carers with Examples of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Inflammatory Bowel Disease is an incurable chronic disease common for ages 15-34,posing not only physical,psychological challenges to patients in many aspects of life and work but also heavy burdens to family caregivers,who are mainly women in the family.Often without care services,we found that some female caregivers have strong motivation in the tedious care process.In-depth interviews with 24 caregivers and 7 patients have taught us that caregivers take up multiple tasks from ensuring food and nutrition,overall monito-ring of physical conditions,to attending to emotion and mental conditions of the patients.Their all-inclusive concerns with the wellbeing of the patients can be highly time and energy consuming.They were deeply connected with the patients,at the level of sharing the physi-cal and emotional conditions and redirecting their families to face the disease together.Women caregivers gained personal benefits through changing understanding of the self and relationship with their families,which provides partial motivation of their long-term care.With social work intervention they would develop an empathetic and'on the same boat'relationship with other patients and families.Their volunteer work and wider social participation can provide community level benefits for long-term care,in complement to individual efforts that are unstable and are isolated.This work evidences the need for social work intervention in long term care in chronic diseases.
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