Helping an aging relative is challenging. Dealing with health issues and the healthcare system is challenging. Put the two together and you have a very big challenge indeed, one that routinely causes stress and anxiety to millions of family caregivers.

Now, not all of caregiving for an older adult revolves around health and healthcare. However, in my experience as a geriatrician – a doctor specialized in the medical care of the elderly — the health concerns of an older person usually turn into major caregiving concerns.

This is because:

• Health problems – whether physical or related to brain function — are almost always the reason that caregivers find themselves stepping in to help an older person.

• Health issues are a key driver of an older person’s quality of life and independence.

• Worrying about health issues is a major cause of caregiver stress. It’s often a source of stress for the older person as well.

• Managing chronic conditions is a lot of work. Most older people end up needing to do a fair amount of daily self-medical care: taking medications, monitoring symptoms, etc. Family caregivers often end up needing to help, or even needing to take over.

In other words, older people have health problems, and those health problems usually cause family caregivers a lot of worry and stress.

To make matters even harder more challenging, doctors often don’t do a very good job addressing the issues that may be most bothersome to older people. These include pain, falls, medication side effects, physical decline, incontinence, and making sense of a lengthening list of chronic medical problems.

This is because most doctors have not had enough training in geriatrics, and in properly addressing an older person’s health concerns in order to maximize wellbeing and independence. Most doctors are also not used to effectively partnering with – and supporting — family caregivers (or even patients, for that matter).

Given these realities, many family caregivers end up quite anxious and overwhelmed with worries about an older loved one’s health, especially when they find themselves unable to establish care with a geriatrician. (Geriatricians are few and far between, and the shortage is projected to get much worse over the next 30 years.)

Fortunately, there is a way to make these health concerns feel more manageable, which helps make caregiving more manageable: the education and empowerment of caregivers, so that they can become “e-caregivers” of elders.