How Can I Improve My Caregiver Skills?

If you’re wondering, “How can I improve my caregiver skills” as you look to bettering yourself professionally over the next year, here are some great things that you can strive to work on over the next year, and why bettering yourself as a caregiver matters.

Why Should I Improve My Caregiver Skills?

You might think you’re doing a great job as a caregiver and don’t need to work on new skills in the New Year. That might be the case. We have so many excellent caregivers with giv.care and we feel so lucky to have amazing employees working hard for their families. However, setting professional goals is always a great idea as it helps you to gain more skills, and improve your life in ways other than through work. Setting professional development goals helps you learn how to set a goal, create steps to work towards the goal, and you can learn many lessons along the way.

Improving skills as a caregiver helps you to be a better trained and qualified caregiver, improves the level of care your client receives, and can help them reach new goals and milestones as well. As you improve your skills, it improves the lives of those you touch as well. This is pretty cool to think about through the lens of caregiving.

How to Improve Caregiver Skills:

There are many different areas in caregiving where you can set goals for improvement. This could be improving shift notes, having more compassion, working on more goals with your client, be more outgoing, have better communication skills, and so much more. We’ll talk about these points specifically, but try to take a look at where you struggle the most in caregiving, and then plan out some goals that will help you to build upon those weaknesses.

Improve Note Taking:

We recently wrote an excellent guide all about note taking within the giv.care app. If you missed that post, you can view that here. Essentially, notes don’t need to be a long and lengthy novel, but they do need to be detailed about what actually happened. If you feel like your notes don’t have a lot of detail, this could be a great thing to work on in the New Year.

Having More Compassion:

It can be very hard to feel compassionate 24/7 (this is written by a mom who has a child with a disability… I get it!) If you notice that you’re becoming a little jaded, or that it’s hard to show up with a happy face to all of your caregiving shifts there are two recommendations:

Establish a better self-care routine to avoid caregiver burnout. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and while that sounds very cliche, they say it for a reason. Take time to establish routines of rest, relaxation, and physical exercise. These things will help to improve your mood and improve your caregiving experience.
Put yourself in the shoes of the person receiving care. While it can be a lot to care for someone with profound needs, it is also very frustrating for them as well. Most individuals would choose to be independent if they could, remembering that can help you to have more compassion throughout your shifts as well.

Work On More Goals with the Client:

DSPD requires clients who are receiving care to be working towards goals that improve their development and independence. The progress towards those goals often rests mainly on the shoulders of the caregiver. Know what those goals are and then create a plan to help the client work towards those goals. Be an active participant in this process and help your client reach new heights over the next year!

Improve Communication Skills:

No one will know you’re struggling or having a hard time with something if you do not communicate that to the person in charge, your client, or those who are here to support you as a caregiver. If there are goals you don’t feel comfortable working on, or there is something about caregiving that is a struggle for you, please communicate those struggles to people who are in place to help.

At giv.care we pride ourselves in our ability to help our caregivers, but we can’t help if we don’t know there is an issue. If you ever have any issues regarding caregiving and working with your client or the person in charge, never hesitate to reach out to our support email at support@giv.care. That inbox is monitored daily and someone will be able to assist you within 24 hours.

These are all great ways you can work on improving your caregiver skills over the next year. Improving yourself directly improves the lives of others. If you ever have questions or feel you need more support as a caregiver, never hesitate to reach out!

BLOG