A Man as a Family Caregiver for an All-Male Family
October 14, 2014
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Yo Mustafa is an actor, a director and a teacher of theatre. He’s been in a same-sex marriage for 25 years. He talks about his life and career. He describes his partner’s life, career and the serious illness he developed. He explains the challenges that have arisen for his partner, his family caregiving, and his all-male family as a whole. He describes the supports they variously needed and still need. He says what more he would like to do to improve support for self-employed professionals like him and his partner when one of them develops a serious illness that prevents the one from working. He says what more he would you like to see done, and by whom, to improve support for families in which both partners are self-employed and one of them develops a serious illness which prevents the one from working. He shares his message for family caregivers in all-male families who have recently learned that one of them is no longer able to work because of a serious illness.
Family Caregivers Unite!
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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
