Family members with a relative with dementia often experience what has been called the "unexpected career of caregiver" and face multifaceted, complex, and stressful life situations that can have important consequences. This exploratory study was designed to address this major public health challenge through the lens of caregiver resilience and caregiver respite programming. While many caregive...

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences and challenges of supporting family caregivers of seniors with complex needs and to outline support strategies and research priorities aimed at supporting them. DESIGN AND METHODS A CIHR-funded, two-day conference entitled "Supporting Family Caregivers of Seniors: Improving Care and Caregiver Outcomes" was held. An...

mediciNe & HealtH/RHode islaNd family Caregivers are inextriCably nested in health care. Upon return home after an important physician visit, a patient may encounter questions from a spouse or other loved one. For many patients, family members provide direct accompaniment to the physician and actively participate in informed consent and other clinical decisions; for some, the caregiver is a des...

BACKGROUND Family caregivers play a central role in ensuring the execution of the discharge care plan. OBJECTIVE To enhance an evidence-based model-the Care Transitions Intervention (CTI)-and to make it more responsive to the needs of family caregivers and determine its impact on a measure of activation. METHODS Prospective cohort of 83 patient-family caregiver partnerships discharged from ...

Aging has been an important population trend of the twentieth century, with most elderly people living in developing countries. Little has been published on the healthcare needs of elderly in the Pacific Islands. The Pacific Islands Geriatric Education Center, at the University of Hawaii, has a mission to promote training in geriatric education in the Pacific Islands to improve healthcare to th...

The purposes of this study were as follows: (1) to compare the attitudes which were considered to be barriers to cancer pain management held by Taiwanese cancer patients and their family caregivers; (2) to determine if these barriers were related to patient hesitancy to take analgesics and/or family caregiver hesitancy to administer analgesics: and (3) to determine if attitudinal barriers by pa...

PURPOSE Transitions in caregiving, such as becoming a primary caregiver to grandchildren or having adult children and grandchildren move in or out, may affect the well-being of the grandmother. DESIGN AND METHODS This report describes caregiving patterns at 3 time points over 24 months in a sample of 485 Ohio grandmothers and examines the effects of stability and change in grandmother caregiv...

OBJECTIVES The Caregiver Strain Index (CSI) is a 13-item index originally developed in the early 1980s to screen for caregiver strain after hospital discharge of an elderly family member. This study examined the reliability of a modified CSI for applications with contemporary long-term family caregivers. METHODS As part of a larger family caregiver study using focus groups, telephone intervie...

BACKGROUND We see a growing number of older adults receiving long-term care in industrialized countries. The Healthcare Utilization Model by Andersen suggests that individual need characteristics influence utilization. The purpose of this study is to analyze correlations between need characteristics and service utilization in home care arrangements. METHODS 1,152 respondents answered the ques...

OBJECTIVE Behavioral and psychological symptoms are common in dementia, and they are especially stressful for family caregivers. Nonpharmacological (or psychosocial) interventions have been shown to be effective in managing behavioral and psychological symptoms, but mainly in institutional settings. The authors reviewed the effectiveness of community-based nonpharmacological interventions deliv...