Trying to learn more about what kind of assistance you can get with your daily care needs? This kind of information can be pretty important, depending on what’s going on in your life. Sometimes there are really very few things more important than knowing the right terminology for what you’re talking about.
Today, we’re going to determine if a caretaker is the same thing as a personal care assistant. If you’re here, you probably don’t know what the difference is already. That’s totally ok, there are a lot of jobs in the medical field and no one is expected to know every single job that is done.
There are even some doctors and nurses that don’t know every position simply because their practice has no overlap. That says a lot about just how vast the world of medical jobs there are out there in the world.
Hopefully, you leave today’s article feeling a little more confident about your knowledge on this topic so you can more easily talk to your doctor, friends, or family on this topic, and you’ll definitely know how to differentiate between the two in any situation.
What is a Personal Care Assistant?
We’re going to start off by looking at who and what personal care assistants are. Depending on your required level of care, you might even end up needing a personal care assistant yourself. So, what do these people do for you and what should you expect?
Personal care assistants have a lot of job duties, and they are able to provide some pretty involved care to patients. Here are their most common duties:
- Medication reminders.
- Helping the patient with personal care tasks, such as:
- Bathing
- Dressing
- Grooming
General housekeeping tasks, for example:
-
- Doing laundry.
- Cooking
- Doing dishes.
- Making beds.
- Taking out the trash.
- Other general housework.
- Setting up doctors’ appointments.
- Help with hygiene.
- Coordinating transportation to doctors’ appointments.
- Helping the patient walk.
As you can see, personal care assistants do a lot for their patients. Realistically, a personal care assistant can help their patients with just about anything. This is one of the more flexible kinds of care that someone can get.
That being said, if you don’t have a high level of required care, you might end up getting a different kind of care that’s better suited both for you and for the person helping to take care of you.
What is a Caregiver?
Alright, and now it’s time to look at what a caregiver is. This term is a little more ambiguous than the other term is, so let’s unpack what this word means so that you can know for future reference.
One of the more common uses of this word is to refer to anyone that helps someone take care of themself when they’re ill, whether they’re paid or unpaid. That makes a lot of people caregivers, whether you have your grandkid help cook for you or your daughter-in-law drive you to the store sometimes.
Under that definition, even a personal care assistant is a caregiver. “So, they are the same thing!” you’re certainly exclaiming. Not so fast, dear reader. As we said, “caregiver” is a bit of an ambiguous term, and we haven’t even gotten to the second definition of this word yet.
“Caregiver” is also a general umbrella word for anyone nurse, doctor, or other health care practitioner that provides medical care to a patient. So, your doctor is one of your caregivers, all of that doctor’s nurses are caregivers, and anyone you interact with that is a medical professional is considered a caregiver.
So, are personal care assistants considered caregivers? Well, that really depends on if personal care assistants are considered healthcare practitioners. That’s really the only qualifier, so what makes someone a healthcare practitioner?
There are a lot of people that are considered healthcare workers. For example:
- All types of nurses.
- There are a lot of kinds of nurses that you may or may not be aware of, for example”
- CNA
- LVN
- LPN
- RN
- Specialized RNs.
- All types of doctors:
- There are general practice doctors and there are also a lot of specialty doctors that can help with things like:
- Ankles and feet.
- Wrists and hands.
- The musculoskeletal system.
- Mental health.
- Any type of physical therapist.
- Once again, there are a lot of kinds of physical therapists. You could easily find a physical therapist for nearly any function in your body.
- There are general practice doctors and there are also a lot of specialty doctors that can help with things like:
- There are a lot of kinds of nurses that you may or may not be aware of, for example”
Ok, so now that who is considered a healthcare professional we have a few more questions. Are personal care assistants doctors, nurses, or physical therapists? The answer is no, they are not. Personal care assistants are trained caretakers. So, that, unfortunately, brings up right up to the answer to our question today.
What Are Other Kinds of Care?
Now that we know for sure what the difference between a caregiver and a personal care assistant is, let’s take a look at some of the other kinds of care that are available for those that need it. You have a whole lot of options:
- Hospice
-
- Hospice is the most intensive of all of your options. This type of care is usually reserved for those that are terminally ill. A lot of this care is just making sure that the patient is comfortable and that all of their emotional needs are met in their final days.
- Memory care.
- Memory care is a type of care that is specifically designed to help people that have conditions that affect their memory that doesn’t have a formal dementia diagnosis.
- Assisted living facilities.
- Assisted living facilities are facilities where people live when they need a high level of help. These are in-patient programs where the patients are taken care of on a daily basis.
- In-Home Care.
- In-home care is when you have someone come take care of you in your home. This kind of care can be done by a caregiver or a trained caretaker.
- Adult daycare.
- Adult daycare is somewhere where older adults that only need a little bit of care can go to get the kind of care that they need.
You definitely have no shortage of options, but how does someone go about figuring out which one is going to be right for their situation? Let’s cover that in detail in the next section.
How to Figure Out What Kind of Care You Need
A lot of people have a hard time knowing what kind of care they need. It’s incredibly common for people to either over-estimate or underestimate the level of care that they need, but getting the right level of care is important if you want to be sure that you’re getting the most out of any program.
Your best bet is going to be speaking with your doctor. Your doctor knows your health very well and will know exactly what questions they need to ask you in order to be sure that they give you the right kind of referral.
It’s even possible that your doctor will just so happen to know someone that will be a great fit for you. There is no situation where asking your doctor about this is a bad idea. They’ll know better than anyone what you need to have the highest possible quality of life.
If you need one of the more specialized kinds of care like memory care, dementia care, or hospice your doctor will likely let you know up-front about that. In most cases, you still have the ability to decide if these things are worth doing unless someone has guardianship over you.
That being said, any time a patient needs a high level of care their doctor is very likely to emphasize how important it is to get the right kind of care. People that need specialized care are at-risk if they don’t have the kind of care that they need.
You could also try contacting AARP about this. They exist solely to help people find out what programs are right for them as well as providing a host of benefits to people that are at or above retirement age.
You could also try doing your own research all on your own, but be prepared to answer a lot of difficult questions if you decide to go this route. It can be hard to see how much help you need, and that’s ok.
Getting the Right Care for You
There are a lot of options available to you when you’re looking to get taken care of, especially if you have a condition that makes it more difficult for you to take care of yourself. Fortunately, there are a lot of resources available and armies of people that want to help.
Whether you need to find a way to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself properly or you’re looking for this information for a loved one, getting the terms right can make the entire search that much easier for everyone involved in your search.
