Working as a case manager in long-term care comes with its own unique set of stressors that often take their toll on the provider’s well-being. The stress and sometimes distress associated with high patient caseloads coupled with unrealistic expectations about the role of care managers can lead to burnout. Yet, as a professional caregiver you are in a unique position to assist family caregivers avoid, overcome and reverse the effects of burnout, stress, and distress by using wellness as the foundation healthy caregiving. The truth is caregivers often have difficulty in locating resources and information, are unsatisfied with the information they are given, and sometimes feel the information they are given is inconsistent. Caregiving also has an unstable component with many ups and downs therefore, a broad range of supports are needed to increase knowledge and confidence among family caregivers.

OBJECTIVES:

• Define the roles stress and distress play in the decision- making process and how they impact the well-being of caregivers is explored.
• Describe the Three theoretical/conceptual models that have been found to be useful for care managers working with caregivers. .
• Identify the needs of individual caregivers using a consistent approach is shared. Care Managers will walk away with knowledge about evidenced based strategies that support the caregiver and improve his/her access to timely relevant information.