BACKGROUND Over 50 million informal caregivers in the United States provide care to an aging adult, saving the economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually from costly hospitalization or institutionalization. Despite the benefits associated with caregiving, caregiver stress can lead to negative physical and mental health consequences, or "caregiver burden". Given these potential negative co...

OBJECTIVES to determine how the immigration phenomenon influences the response to informal care in the domestic level through the caregiver activity, and to analyze the cultural dialogue established in the residential area of Murcia (Spain). METHOD This is an ethnographic study, conducted in 26 informal immigrant caregivers. As data collection instruments, semi-structured interviews and parti...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To determine the feasibility of individualized caregiver training for home care and symptom management conducted at the bedside of older patients with cancer prior to hospital discharge. DESIGN Pilot study. SETTING The Extended Care Rehabilitation Center at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center in North Carolina. SAMPLE 7 female informal caregivers with a mean age ...

BACKGROUND Paying attention to and improving the mental health of the informal caregivers of disabled elders has become a global public health priority. This study focused on low-income female Uyghur and Kazakh informal caregivers of disabled elders residing in China's far west. It investigated the prevalence of and the major related factors of depressive emotion. METHODS A cross-sectional st...

Informal care may substitute for formal long-term care that is often publicly funded or subsidized. The costs of informal caregiving are borne by the caregiver and may consist of worse health outcomes and, if the caregiver has not retired, worse labor market outcomes. We estimate the impact of providing informal care to one's partner on the caregiver's health using data from the Survey of Healt...

PURPOSE This paper reports on Canadian research that examined the cost effectiveness of home care for seniors as a substitute for long-term institutional services. DESIGN AND METHODS Two Canadian cities were included in the research: Victoria, British Columbia, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. The research computes the costs of formal care and informal care in both settings and ensures comparable grou...

BACKGROUND Emergency department visits and hospitalizations (EDVH) place a large burden on patients and the health care system. The presence of informal caregivers may be beneficial for reducing EDVH among patients with specific diagnoses. Our objective was to determine whether the presence of an informal caregiver was associated with the occurrence of an EDVH among clients 50 years of age or o...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to analyse whether the parallel life situation between stroke patients and their informal caregivers (dyads) shown in cross-sectional studies prevails also in a longitudinal perspective. METHODS A total of 377 Swedish stroke patients, aged ≥ 65 years, and their 268 informal caregivers were followed from hospital admission and one year on. Analyses were...

OBJECTIVES: To determine the factors associated with a home death among older adults who received palliative care nursing home services in the home. METHODS: The participants in this retrospective cohort study were 151 family caregivers of patients who had died approximately 9 months prior to the study telephone interview. The interview focused on the last year of life and covered two main area...