Facilitating and Hindering Factors in Family Care Giving Process on Iranian Frail Elderly: Female Caregivers Experiences

Objectives: There is worldwide growth in the elderly population. Family care of elderly is key to long term care system and main duty of women at home. Qualitative study about facilitating and hindering factor of family care giving process provide clarified viewpoint on female caregivers need to plan and make effective supportive health policy. Methods & Materials: The present study was conducted by grounded theory. A purposive sample of 12 family caregiver participated in this study and data was gathered by deeply semi-structured interview and observation in the field. All of them were transcribed word by word and were analyzed through open, axial and selective coding according to Strauss and Corbin's approach (1998). Triangulation of the data gathering from different methods, prolonged engagement with caregivers, member check by participants and experts, was used to increase rigor of the study. Results: Female caregivers experience facilitator and hindering factors that affect the care giving process. These factors were categorized in 3 main classes of personal, familial and external factors and 9 subcategories of caregiver's knowledge on elderly care, personal characters of caregiver and care recipient, care giving burden, background of interpersonal relationship between caregiver and care recipient, familial supportive network, family member participation, formal supportive system, context of family care giving at home, and community based health care systems for elder people. Conclusion: Naturally, intervening factors in care giving process can confront caregivers with relief or difficulty Based on caregivers experiences, modifying facilitator and hindering factors by more family participation, psychosocial support, care giving education, improvement of care giving context and establishing appropriate age friendly health care systems would be effective in managing of the process by female caregivers, and could be helpful for them to be success in this manner.