When the Healthcare System Hands the Burden to Caregivers

Yesterday was another day spent in the emergency room with my mom. She’s been dealing with multiple health issues overlapping for weeks and months, and yesterday things got bad enough that we finally took our chances there.

Eight hours later, we left the hospital with more questions than answers — and a prescription for frustration.

The healthcare system in this country is incredibly broken.

We’ve gone to multiple specialists, hoping for clarity, and it’s hit or miss whether they can find a lasting or effective treatment plan. There’s rarely a cohesive diagnosis or follow-through — just a revolving door of appointments, referrals, and guesswork.

In the ER, I thought maybe, finally, we’d get some answers. Instead, after giving my mom several strong medications that made her drowsy and slowed her breathing and heart rate, they told me she couldn’t stay overnight.

When I explained that I wasn’t a nurse, and that I didn’t feel comfortable taking her home when she was so fragile, they nodded sympathetically—and discharged her anyway.

I was livid.

Caregivers are not medical professionals. We are not trained to monitor heart rates, medication side effects, or post-emergency reactions. And yet, over and over again, families are sent home with loved ones who are still in precarious condition, expected to somehow “manage” what the healthcare system won’t take responsibility for.

Because she was sent home, it was another night of zero sleep for me — sitting awake, checking on her breathing, wondering if she’d wake up, and fearing that I might have to make another trip back to the ER. This is not okay. This is how caregivers collapse. We are stretched beyond our limits, carrying both the physical and emotional weight of a system that continually offloads its responsibility onto us.

The system is failing not just patients, but the people who care for them. I want to be clear — almost every doctor, nurse, and staff member we encountered was kind, attentive, and doing their best. This isn’t about blaming individuals. It’s about a system that ties the hands of even the most compassionate professionals. They’re being asked to make impossible decisions within constraints that prioritize efficiency and liability over patient safety and continuity of care. I could see their frustration, too. They cared — but they couldn’t do more.

Our healthcare system has placed impossible burdens on caregivers — expecting us to fill the gaps for what hospitals, clinics, and specialists can’t or won’t do. We are told to “watch them closely” or “call if something changes,” as if we’re not already watching every breath, listening for every sound, sleeping with one eye open.

Caregivers should never be placed in the position of acting as emergency medical staff. Our system needs reform — not just for patients, but for the people who love and care for them. Until then, we have to advocate fiercely, document relentlessly, and refuse to be silent about what’s happening behind the scenes.