Perceived value of support for older adults coping with multi-morbidity: patient, informal care-giver and family physician perspectives

This study investigated the perceived value of informal and formal supports for older adults withmulti-morbidity fromtheperspectivesofpatients, care-givers and family physicians. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with  patients, their informal care-givers and their family physicians in an urban academic family health team in Ontario. Analysis was conducted using a General Inductive Approach to facilitate identification of main themes and build a framework of perceived value of supports. Participant views converged on supports that facilitate patient independence and ease care-giver burden. However, important differences in participant perceptions arose regarding these priorities. Physicians and care-givers valued supports that facilitate health and safety while patients prioritised supports that enable self-efficacy and independence. While formal supports which eased care-giver burden were viewed positively by all members of the triad, many patients also rejected formal supports, citing that informal support from their care-giver was available. Such conflicts between patient, care-giver andphysician-perceived value of supportsmay have important implications for consumer and care-giver willingness to accept formal supports when supports are available. These findings contribute to the broader literature on community-based care by incorporating the perspectives of patients, informal * Institute ofHealth Policy,Management &Evaluation, University of Toronto, Canada. † Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System, Toronto, Canada. ‡ Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Canada. § Sunnybrook Academic Family Health Team, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada. || Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, Canada. **Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Canada. ¶ Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Canada. Ageing & Society , , –. © Cambridge University Press  This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/./), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:./SX  terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X15000768 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.191.40.80, on 21 Aug 2017 at 10:34:40, subject to the Cambridge Core care-givers and family physicians to understand better the barriers and facilitators of uptake of supportive services that contribute to successful ageing at home.