Developing the Carer-Doctor Partnership

The Hon Julie Bishop, Minister for Ageing, Ms. Louise Gilmore, National President of Carers Australia, Ms. Irene Gibbons, National CEO of Carers Australia, honoured guests. It gives me great pleasure to be with you today to help launch Carers Week 2004 under the overall theme Carers' Health and Wellbeing.

The AMA strongly supports and commends the vital role that unpaid carers such as family members and friends play in the care of older people and younger people with disabilities.

In an environment where care and health are inextricably linked, better health and social outcomes are positively supported and enhanced by the work of carers.

The Australian Medical Association and Carers Australia have worked closely for some five years now as partners in the National Aged Care Alliance.

As chair of the AMA's Committee on the Care of Older People, and as AMA Vice President, I have been both impressed and influenced by the work of Carers Australia in:

1.      pricking the conscience and reminding government and professional groups of the existence of carers, and

2.      in raising community recognition of the vital role played by carers in the care of so many in our community, especially the frail, the aged, and people with disabilities.

A job well done, Louise and Irene, and Carers Australia. Keep it up!

These disabilities can be transitory, or they may be ongoing and permanent.

General practitioners, other specialist doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, and other care workers all play vital roles in the health and care needs of older people and younger people with disabilities.

These roles are recognised by society and on the whole our society contributes towards their cost.

This professional work is supported by the people whose labour of love contributes tremendously to society as well as to the care and well-being of their charges. This work of unpaid carers, who provide for the 24/7 care needs of their loved ones, needs to be heralded.

Carers' work needs more recognition ‑ and in many ways. This includes the place of carers in the health and aged care partnership for both older people and people with disabilities. There are financial ways such as support payments and in real support such as the provision of respite care arrangements: obviously there needs ti be sufficient respite access.

I have called my short talk today Developing the carer-doctor partnership.

I think if we can further develop this partnership, it will be to the advantage of both carers and the carers' carers: doctors (my profession) and other professional groups. Most importantly - it will also benefit the people we are caring for, our patients: our loved ones.

What is the scope of this partnership?

At a public, policy level, it is events such as this National Launch of Carers Week 2004, which are important in raising awareness of the need to develop this partnership. The surrounding public acknowledgement that exudes from such a rallying point as this helps.

At a somewhat less public, but still policy level, it is in the development of guidelines documents such as those currently being developed by the Australian Pharmaceutical Advisory Council on medication management in the community, and medication management in the continuum of care from hospital to either the community or a residential facility.

At the personal level, it is vital that we seek to enhance this partnership between individual carers and doctors, in their care for individual patients: their loved ones.

However, carers' own health, psychological and social well-being are a vital factor in this equation.

While most primary carers are of workforce age, paid work is usually not possible because alternative care for their loved ones is either unavailable, inaccessible, inappropriate or just not an option they wish to take up.

The long-term social, economic and health consequences for young carers ‑ children and teenagers caring for their parents or grandparents - is even more dire.

Indeed, the many now elderly carers of ageing, disabled, infirm, heavily dependant and perhaps psychiatrically ill family members in the community is staggering.

It is clear that these labours of love by carers, which Carers Australia estimate saves the Australian society at least $16 billion per year, are at the expense of the carers' own economic, social, and health well-being.

I will do my best to make my members, Australian doctors, aware of this situation, so that they can understand and each do what they can to help share the caring.

GPs are well placed to keep an eye out for signs of self neglect, poor health and injury in people they know to be carers.

Prominent among the health issues suffered by carers as a direct result of their caring responsibilities include physical injuries from lifting, anxiety, and depression.

There is a desperate need for more community services, including respite care to enable carers "time off" from their onerous, and very full-on responsibilities.

Only on Friday, one of my dear patients was relating how refreshed and re-invigorated he felt after a weekend of respite care that was provided to his disabled daughter.

Respite care is essential for carers' own health, because many carers are chronically tired. They desperately need just one night of unbroken sleep, a day off, or an extended period with no direct caring responsibilities.

Such respite enables carers to refresh themselves and regain a sense of wellbeing.

I know, and am concerned, that many carers often neglect their own health and miss out on a review of their own health needs.

This can be for a range of reasons, from finding time, finding someone to sit with their charge, as well as their own selflessness, down-grading their own problems in the face of those of the person for whom they are caring: indeed the self-effacing traits of carers in our society we all recognise and must address.

It is easy for carers to focus so completely on the people they are caring for that they overlook their own health needs: they need to be reminded to care for themselves too, else their own ability to care will be ground down.

A better deal for carers is a social issue which has been ignored for too long.

The fact that carers are now raising these very relevant concerns is not an indication that they have stopped loving their loved ones, just that they need more support and that their roles are hugely under-estimated and indeed under-valued.

Carers' Health and Wellbeing is an issue whose recognition is long overdue.

The AMA supports carers in this just cause. We will work with you to seek to raise awareness of the health needs of carers and promote loudly the theme of access to a better deal for carers.

Thank you.