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[ Narrator: ] Caregiving can have serious negative health,
financial and emotional effects on the caregiver.
A high percentage of employees eventually quit their jobs due
to caregiving responsibilities.
Employees must use the phone for personal calls, leave early
or come in late, take time off, need to leave
for medical appointments or other personal reasons.
Most often exhaustion or preoccupation
with a home situation leaves the employee incapable
of focusing on work.
[Narrator:] Jean is a registered nurse who works
for a social services agency.
She works with family caregivers
to teach them the practical skills of caregiving.
Her world changed one day
when her husband suddenly developed life-threatening
medical problems.
[Jean Mueller:] Caregiving really took over my life
and my job became very secondary.
There were certain things that needed to be done
and there isn't a body to put in place, you know,
to do my job when I'm not here.
So I had this realization of many responsibilities.
However, I tried to come in but when I was here,
I really wasn't present.
I didn't want to be here.
And there was even a sense of resentment that I needed
to do this, but I really wanted to be
at the hospital with my husband.
So it became, um, there was this real big internal conflict.
I love my job and I love what I do, but at that point in time,
I didn't want to do it.
[Narrator:] Throughout Diane's employment for a state agency,
she cared for both parents and her daughter; a lengthy,
complicated and difficult situation.
[Diane Brinson:] I had to be able to come and go
from work almost on the spur of the moment.
It usually wasn't that imminent but I came
to face some challenges at work because my coworkers felt
that I was focusing too much on my parents and my father's care
as opposed to always being at the office or always being
on the job, although my job performance wasn't impacted.
So that became a stress.
[Narrator:] Kara, works for a state agency and is a caregiver
for her mother, who lives in another county.
[Kara Sandley:] Some days, I'm not as productive
as I normally would be.
It depends on if I get a phone call at work,
my dad is having a bad day so my mom calls me.
So sometimes it's difficult to work through that and put it
in the back of your brain to continue doing what you need to.
Some days you just feel overwhelmed with what's going
on at work and what's going on at home.
But you just kinda find a balance and you work through it
because you know that, it can't be bad all the time.
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