Family caregivers are the glue between patients, physicians and medical facilities, said geriatrics expert Dr. Cheryl Woodson during “Caregiving in America,” a conference presented in downtown Chicago this week by Washington Post Live.

“In the new health care paradigm, the caregivers have to be the glue, because the communication systems are not there yet. When you transfer from one facility to another, it is the caregiver who has to be the institutional memory,” Woodson said. “There are specific questions to ask and ways to organize that information.”

Robyn Golden, director of health and aging at Rush University Medical Center, said she is continually “shocked” by how often she meets caregivers who do not identify themselves as such. “The place to catch the invisible caregiver is either in the church basement or in the health system, because many caregivers don’t say, ‘I’m a caregiver.’ So it’s really important we create a safety net to find them,” she said. Caregivers, Golden suggested, need to be asked about how they are feeling and about their overall health.

Golden said it is especially difficult for medical providers to engage with family caregivers as equal partners, partly because physicians and nurses are often overwhelmed with patients and unaccustomed to dealing with caregivers. The result is that caregivers can feel unwanted or invisible to medical providers, and they often miss out on their loved one’s discharge orders or changes in treatments.

According to findings published by AARP’s Public Policy Institute, almost half of family caregivers performed medical or nursing tasks for their recipients facing multiple chronic physical and cognitive conditions in 2012. Nearly 80 percent of family caregivers who provided medical or nursing tasks were also managing medications, including administering intravenous fluids and injections. “We are asking caregivers to do things that an RN would be nervous to do on their own,” Golden said.

The answer to the caregiver crisis, Golden added, is taking time to teach caregivers their tasks and determine if they even have the capacity to care, as many caregivers still work full-time jobs or are raising young children.

Woodson maintains that a greater safety net of home services and support for caregivers, including assistance for things like placing catheters or preparing infusions for antibiotics, is desperately needed.

When asked what advice she would give to adult children caring for their parents or grandparents, Golden told Life Matters Media: “They should know what they can do and what they can’t do, and then work through any guilt they may have. They should also take advantage of caregiver resources and area agencies on aging.” Golden said many caregivers live like a “club sandwich,” caring for their children, parents and even grandparents simultaneously.

But the best thing for families, Golden said, may be early conversations about aging and end of life preferences. “There is a lot of denial, none of us want to think about getting older. People don’t discuss these issues until a crisis,” she said. “But the media can help change that.”