Palliative medicine
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Palliative medicine · Jul 2013
Family caregiver learning--how family caregivers learn to provide care at the end of life: a qualitative secondary analysis of four datasets.
Family caregivers are assuming growing responsibilities in providing care to dying family members. Supporting them is fundamental to ensure quality end-of-life care and to buffer potentially negative outcomes, although family caregivers frequently acknowledge a deficiency of information, knowledge, and skills necessary to assume the tasks involved in this care. ⋯ Findings inform areas for future research to identify effective, individualized programs and interventions to support positive learning experiences for family caregivers of dying people.
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Palliative medicine · Jul 2013
ReviewAged parents' experiences during a critical illness trajectory and after the death of an adult child: a review of the literature.
Given the growing life expectancy, the likelihood increases that health-care providers are confronted with older people having an adult child with a life-limiting disease. ⋯ There is a need for more in-depth research to understand the lived experience of these parents and what health-care providers can do to assist them.
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Palliative medicine · Jul 2013
Exploring factors and caregiver outcomes associated with feelings of preparedness for caregiving in family caregivers in palliative care: a correlational, cross-sectional study.
Family caregivers in palliative care often report feeling insufficiently prepared to handle the caregiver role. Preparedness has been confirmed as a variable that may actually protect family caregiver well-being. Preparedness refers to how ready family caregivers perceive they are for the tasks and demands in the caregiving role. ⋯ Feelings of preparedness seem to be important for how family caregivers experience the unique situation when caring for a patient who is severely ill and close to death. Our findings support the inclusion of preparedness in support models for family caregivers in palliative care. Psycho-educational interventions could preferably be designed aiming to increase family caregiver's preparedness to care, including practical care, communication and emotional support.
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Palliative medicine · Jul 2013
ReviewTools to measure quality of life and carer burden in informal carers of heart failure patients: a narrative review.
Heart failure is a complex cardiac syndrome prevalent in an older population. Caring for heart failure patients through the disease trajectory presents physical and emotional challenges for informal carers. Carers have to deal with clinically unstable patients, the responsibility of managing and titrating medication according to symptoms and frequent admissions to acute care. These challenges compound the demands on caregivers' physical and psychosocial well-being. Alongside the negative impact of being a carer, positive aspects have also been demonstrated; carers describe feelings of shared responsibility of caring with professional carers and the reward of supporting a loved one, which creates a new role in their relationship. ⋯ This review highlights evidence that informal carers supporting patients with heart failure face many challenges impacting their physical and mental well-being. The studies described provide an insight into the individual dimensions that make a carer particularly vulnerable, namely, younger carers, female carers and carers with existing physical and emotional health issues. Additionally, there are external influences that increase risk of burden, including New York Heart Association Score status of the patient, if the patient has had recurrent emergency admissions or has recently been discharged home and the level of social support available to the carer. A further finding from conducting this review is that there are still limited measures of the positive aspects of caregiving.