Informal Caregiver Case Study

Introduction
The impacts from ageing population are growing. When people become frail, they cannot take care of themselves independently. The lost of independency is a great problem to everyone. In fact, this concern is unavoidable. When human gets old, his/her physical function deteriorates. In the stage of dependency, informal caregiver plays a crucial role in daily life. Informal caregivers are those friends or family member of the one who need help and they provide care without receiving money (Fowler, 2014). Usually, informal caregivers provide instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) and activities of daily living (ADLs) for the care receiver. In my “Calling-on” exercise, Ms. Ng is the informal caregiver and she has to provide
Ng lives with her husband. They are 89 years old and 90 years old respectively. They live in the eastern district of Hong Kong Island. She does not live in a nuclear family. She has three sons and two daughters. However, her offspring moved to Canada due to career and academic development. Last year, Mr. Chan was diagnosed with gastric cancer. He was then sent to Queen Mary Hospital, which locate at the southern district of Hong Kong Island. After the operation, Mr. Chan was required to stay in the hospital for two weeks in order to speed up his recovery. To take care of Mr. Chan, therefore, Ms. Ng was needed to go to Queen Mary Hospital all the way from the southern part of Hong Kong Island. Ms. Ng told us that every time she went to visit her husband, the most troublesome thing was the transportation. She needed to ride on bus and mini-bus so that she could reach the hospital. The whole transportation process took her 4 hours. She had experienced an accident during the transportation. Since the bus drivers need to catch up their driving schedule, they do not wait for everyone to sit down before driving the bus. One time, Ms. Ng cannot stand firmly and the bus started to move. She was then hit her head on the hand rail. From this, I can see that long distance travelling is a risky thing but it is an inescapable on Ms. Ng
Ng in the aspect of time, economic, physical and psychological. Ms. Ng is a traditional woman. She believes that girls have to listen to her husband and take care of him until forever. So, when her husband is sick, she will not leave him alone and insist to visit him every day. During the hospitalization of Mr. Chan, Ms. Ng took 4 hours a day to travel back and forth. Besides, she also needed to wake up earlier to prepare food for her husband. This was really time-consuming. The travelling cost was high too. As Ms. Ng needed to use mini-bus to get to the hospital, the transportation welfare could not be used. She was required to pay the original price. Moreover, the caring burden was actually a torture on her psychological and physical condition. Her worries made her could not sleep well, thus she became thinner. Since she is a chronic illness sufferer, the degeneration of physical health may worsen the severity of her sickness too. The amount of effort she paid could not be