Table 3.

Relationship Attributes Essential to Good Communication Among Older Adults, Their Families, and Paid Caregivers

Adaptability of paid caregiver
Proxy 13	“[The older adult] is stubborn, but once you get to know her then you can work around her… Instead of her adjusting to you, you adjust to her and that’s it.”
Older adult 1	“I don’t want someone that comes in here and says ‘Oh, you have to do this and you can’t do that.’ You can’t come in here and tell me what to do in my house… You’re working for me. Not, I’m not working for you, ya know? So that all goes with the job, ya know? That’s part of being a caregiver, ya know?”
A good personality fit
Proxy 4	“Compatibility, I think. Someone who is going to be compatible to whoever the person is that they are going to be taking care of.”
Paid caregiver 7	“I like to treat the person well. I like that the person also treats me well too, that we mutually understand each other. So, I think that we hit it off from the first day that I came to this job, we have good chemistry.”
Trust between paid caregiver and proxy
Paid caregiver 14	“And now three years in I can say it is more like a family because it’s about trusting someone. If you trust someone that means a lot.”
Proxy 14	“It would be good if everybody who has started to go through this got a booklet of some sort from someplace… talking very frankly about the aides and that you have to trust in them.”