Project Narrative

For my project in this internship course I chose to do a Caregiver Handbook along with

the other interns that I worked alongside at Macon Coliseum. For my part I did a conjoined part

with Madison Powers because the topic we were covering was a heavier topic that really

needed two people. What was covered was caregiving for adults that are also employed with

another job and have to take on caregiving while still working. I think it seems like it could be an

easier topic but once you see all the differences there are with how to manage your time,

working with your boss, telecommuting and more it comes down to a lot more information.

This topic was new to me because while my parents have acted as caregivers for their parents

they would do so after work at nights and the weekends but they also had hospice and other

care that handled most of the work so they didn’t have to add that to their plate. Another part

of what I did was outline the resources that could help these working caregivers and the laws

that help them when dealing with work so they aren’t punished or fired for their caregiving

needs. Working with the other interns we were going to turn this into a book/handbook of

sorts for her to be able to show other caregivers or health care workers that help when

someone in the ICU/ CVICU becomes a caregiver as a resource for them to read. However since

this COVID-19 we have resulted to do a google doc that was sent to our supervisor at Coliseum

and she has the ability to print it out and put it in a binder or however she wants to do it to give

it to patients and her grief group as a resource. We thought this handbook was needed because

caregiving, laws, job, and the government is always changing and someone being thrown into a

caregiving role can be really tiring and draining on them especially if they can’t afford help, do it

alone, and have a strenuous other job. So this book is supposed to be a saving grace caregiving
101 book to help educate and support them during their time of caregiving. As a handbook this

would be a really good resource to give to people that are in the ICU/CVICU that are

transitioning to different types of care and need to see all that caregiving entails, given to the

grief groups that could benefit because of lose with different caregiving options now that they

could be alone of have a new person to care for and for interns to follow. It’s always good to

learn new information that could be helpful in the future. This handbook went really well. I was

a little stressed with the amount of work it was going to take because no book are like 5 pages

it needs to be way more. But I think with the amount of research, resources we had given to us

by Franchetta and work put it, it turned out really well. I don’t think I would do much differently

there are so many topics to talk about under the general of caregiving, we tried to pick the

most important and really go into detail on those 5 topics as opposed to doing lots of topics and

only hitting the surface with them. I think the only thing different would be working with

multiple people is sometimes a challenge in its self for getting tasks done on time, and

beforehand making it even earlier so our supervisor could look at it and give us feedback,

added some trouble but it turned out fine In the end. I think a true show of this project, is our

supervisor was super impressed with our handbook, and it really did everything she taught us

and the caregiving classes we have taken.