Roxanna Devlin is a Nashville, Tennessee entrepreneur with a diverse professional background spanning medical housing, real estate, and finance. As cofounder of The Med Stay, LLC, a trademark of Medical Housing Solutions, LLC, she provides accommodations and support services for patients undergoing complex medical treatments and recovery. Roxanna Devlin has also worked as a Realtor with Keller Williams Realty and previously served as a senior vice president at UBS in New York City. Her experience coordinating patient-focused housing and concierge services places her close to the realities of recovery, where caregivers play an essential role. Drawing on her multidisciplinary expertise, her perspective reflects both operational insight and a deep understanding of patient and caregiver needs during the recovery process.
How Caregivers Play a Critical Role in Recovery
Caregivers assist patients in recovery and form a vital part of the clinical team, helping patients transition from treatment to everyday life. They navigate challenging situations, usually with little to no guidance. Indeed, they play a decisive role in ensuring patients transition successfully from hospital to home. While doctors and other healthcare professionals focus on stabilizing medical conditions, caregivers ensure that there is continuity of care. This aids in shaping recovery progress and influencing overall clinical outcomes.
A caregiver’s physical foundation involves managing the mechanics of recovery. Once a patient gets discharged, caregivers are responsible for carrying out tasks that help prevent complications, such as managing medical adherence. They also issue alerts since they can identify changes like weight fluctuations and breathing difficulties, some of which may go unnoticed by the patient.
Additionally, during recovery, patients often must learn everyday activities anew. Thus, caregivers assist them with moving around, bathing, and eating. Some of these tasks may be physically demanding, but learning how to do them again helps preserve health, hygiene, and dignity. In scenarios such as after a stem cell transplant, patients may require continuous vigilance, especially during the first 30 days when they are most vulnerable to issues like infections.
Beyond physical responsibilities, caregivers provide emotional and psychological support. Recovery is not a linear process. As such, a caregiver plays a pivotal role in turning discouragement, typical in some recovery cases such as mental health issues, into motivation. Caregivers draw from the CHIME framework (connectedness, hope, identity, meaning, and empowerment), a personal recovery model that encourages social reconnection, fosters hope, and helps individuals reshape their identity during illness while finding renewed purpose and confidence.
In conditions such as mental illness or stroke, caregivers help address stigma, especially coming from the patients themselves. They achieve this by creating supportive environments that incorporate encouragement and reinforce commitment. In case a patient’s energy runs low or they start exhibiting symptoms of depression, a caregiver may make a point to be optimistic to provide emotional stability. This is helpful for the patient to visualize progress and believe in a future beyond their current limitations.
Additionally, caregivers help in navigating the healthcare system by serving as critical intermediaries within fragmented areas of healthcare. During challenging transitions, this helps prevent patients from being overlooked. Studies report that 26 percent of emergency visits and 18 percent of rehospitalizations among older adults are linked to poorly managed transitions. Active caregiver participation lowers readmission rates and adverse medical events. Thus, they help reduce risks by addressing communication gaps and confirming accurate medication reconciliation across different healthcare settings.
Furthermore, caregivers are among the few people with a comprehensive understanding of patients’ histories. This makes them effective advocates, addressing issues like the sourcing of resources. In situations when professional direction is unclear, they research conditions and interpret medical information to guide decisions. In turn, this supports a safe recovery environment.
Despite their contributions, there is a need to protect caregivers’ welfare. Because a patient’s recovery is closely tied to the caregiver’s well-being, caregivers may eventually experience exhaustion and burnout, posing significant risks to the rehabilitation process. To sustain progress, relevant stakeholders must pay attention to the caregiver’s physical and emotional health to enhance their capacity to provide consistent care.
With many caregivers sacrificing to some extent their personal health, career advancement, or social connections, challenges arise and, in some cases, may contribute to a patient’s premature institutionalization. An effective recovery approach recognizes that caregiving itself requires ongoing support. Accordingly, providing caregivers with training, respite services – temporary relief – and mental health resources is a compassionate move and a medical necessity, ensuring all parties, including caregivers, healthcare providers, patients, and their families, are well taken care of.
About Roxanna Devlin
Roxanna Devlin is a Nashville, Tennessee based entrepreneur and cofounder of The Med Stay, LLC, where she oversees accommodations and concierge services for medical patients and their families. Her background includes roles in real estate with Keller Williams Realty and finance with UBS in New York City. An honors graduate of Amherst University and a Duke University School of Law alumna, she has also served on nonprofit boards including the Nashville Children’s Theatre and the Adventure Science Center.