Professor Thomas Fischer is a friend of clear words. “Caring for relatives is a predictable event in all our lives,” says the nursing scientist from ehs Dresden. In view of the age structure in western societies, he says, everyone should be prepared to have family members in need of care at some point. However, some occupational groups take on nursing tasks more often than others - for example, nursing staff for the elderly and the sick. If they also care for family members in addition to their job, then they are double duty carers: people with double care responsibilities.

The research team around Thomas Fischer and his colleague Anne-Katrin Haubold, Professor for Human Resource Management at the HTW Dresden, surveyed almost 500 people working in inpatient and outpatient care in the DDCare-D project. Of these, 20 percent stated that they care for at least one family member; many even take responsibility for two or more relatives. On average, double duty carers look after private care tasks for four years and about 17 hours per week. And as in the overall population, the proportion of women among them is very high - according to DDCare-D, it is 93 percent.

“You do it, you're a geriatric nurse”

The surveys show that the time and tasks of double duty carers do not seem to differ much from those of other carers: They range from keeping company, shopping and cooking to full-time care. There are, however, some differences, says Anne-Katrin Haubold: “High expectations are placed on professional carers within the family to take over the care and organisation of care for relatives.” They are automatically expected to be able to cope with the situation, as they are professionally trained to do so, the researcher says. “And then, of course, there is also a high intrinsic motivation to take on the tasks: As a trained nurse, you are probably more confident to be able to care for relatives and want to take over.”

At the same time, nursing professions bring with them typical peculiarities that make it difficult for double duty carers: for example, shift work, coupled with a lack of personnel and the flexible working hours that this situation requires. In contrast to many office workers, nursing professionals can neither fall back on flexitime nor on regulations for working from home, which would make it easier for them to organise private care. On the other hand, nursing staff are in greater demand than ever before, vacancies are everywhere in the country, and good employees are rare.

One does not talk about double care

The project therefore also included the perspective of the employers: How can the work organisation be adapted so that double duty carers do not leave the job due to frustration and excessive demands? Good work-life balance offers are a decisive advantage in the competitive labour market.

At this point, Haubold and Fischer report another remarkable discovery: many nursing professionals do not talk about their private nursing duties at work. Only 70 percent of those surveyed had told their colleagues, and superiors were informed about the situation in 67 percent of cases. The researchers can only speculate a 78bout the reasons: “Private nursing tasks often grow gradually, and there is never a concrete reason to tell about it,” says Haubold. In addition, Fischer adds, there is certainly also a fear of professional disadvantages and problems in the team: “Because the staffing level in the care sector is so thin, absences must be compensated by colleagues who are often overworked anyway. You don't want to appear less efficient and certainly not make any special demands.”

An important finding of the research project was therefore that double duty carers and their employers need to talk more about the advantages and disadvantages of double care. After all, the constellation also brings a gain in competence from which both sides benefit: The carers resort on their professional experience in their private care tasks, and the employers benefit from the extended view of the private carers on professional care processes. They are often much better able to identify care gaps in the company than other employees because they see the processes from a different perspective, Fischer explains. Double duty carers are therefore not problem cases, but rather an enrichment - if they are supported according to their situation.

Rethinking personnel planning

In order to support the dialogue between employers and their double duty carers, the project team has developed information material and discussion guides for HR managers. The researchers are making the documents available free of charge on their project website - and have already received a great deal of support from care providers. Some companies also seem to be making progress in the implementation of the proposals in their personnel policy. This would mean breaking up familiar patterns - but the need to retain skilled staff is so great that the institutions are quite prepared to do so, explains Haubold.

DDCare-D has also created support services for those affected, such as workshops and peer support for double duty carers by colleagues who have already been in the same situation. However, this shows how problematic the care situation in Germany is: the offers were hardly accepted. Not because they were not useful, on the contrary - the feedback was extremely positive. But the addressees simply do not have the time between their demanding job and the private care of their relatives to make use of the urgently needed offers of support.

Thomas Fischer is nevertheless hopeful that the workshops and the peer concept will also be used sooner or later. “The concepts are ready for use, and we make them available to the public through a Creative Commons license,” he says. “Often these things take on a life of their own after a while.” So, if a sponsor or an institution wants to take a closer look at the issue: the DDCare-D team is prepared.