What strategies can help prevent burnout for a caregiver of someone with a spinal cord injury?

Taking care of yourself as much as possible, trying to find time away. One of the challenges with a spinal cord injury is often the injured person would have been at work or at school, and the spouse or the family member will have been away from the person. And then all of a sudden, you’re in a situation where you’re together 24 hours-a-day. And I don’t care what kind of marriage you had—24 hours a day is tough on any marriage. So I think if you can find time away from each other, time to yourself whether it’s taking a walk around the block, spending time reading, whatever you find that can help you take care of yourself is important time away.

I think that there has to be a backup. We have a small caregiver program where we don’t hire the caregivers, we reimburse the clients and they’re responsible for training and everything. And we always tell them, “In order to be eligible for this program, you have to have two caregivers—you have to have a backup because one person can’t be there 24/7. And what happens if that caregiver gets sick? Then you don’t have anybody, especially if you’re living by yourself—who’s going to help you out?” We always make them have two people on their little list they give to us and we encourage family members to have a backup. If the wife is the caregiver, get Aunt Martha to be the caregiver so she can go shopping even if it’s four to five hours a day. Find someone else in the family who is willing to come spend the weekend, so they can get away for the weekend. It’s not just the person with the spinal cord injury that is dealing with the traumatic injury.