Informal caregivers' workload "irresponsibly" high: Nurses organization

Over 30 percent of nurses and caregivers think that an "irresponsible" number of tasks are left up to informal caregivers, according to a survey by the nurses and carers association V&VN among nearly a thousand of its members, NU.nl reports. Informal caregivers are people who provide care to a sick friend or family member. Three out of five of the survey respondents indicated that they sometime pick up a task that is not their responsibility, to give the informal caregivers a bit of a break. The V&VN believes that informal caregivers play a very important role in the healthcare system and should continue to do so. The organization appreciates nurses and carers who pick up extra tasks to help informal caregivers, but this only adds to their already heavy workload. "The question is whether clients and informal caregivers know where to find the municipality for the use of domestic help and volunteers. There is a gap between the help needed by clients in the neighborhood and the support the municipalities offer. It can not be that district nurses have to fill this gap", a spokesperson for the V&VN said to the newspaper.