Positive and negative outcomes of informal caregiving at home and in institutionalised long-term care: a cross-sectional study

BMC Geriatrics

Research Article

Gertrudis I. J. M. Kempen¹  Silke F. Metzelthin¹  Antonius W. Ambergen²  Ellen Verbakel³  Job van Exel⁴  Marja Y. Veenstra⁵ 

[1] Department of Health Services Research, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, Netherlands;Department of Methodology and Statistics, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, Netherlands;Department of Sociology, Radboud University, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE, Nijmegen, Netherlands;Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, Netherlands;Huis voor de Zorg, P.O. Box 5185, 6130 PD, Sittard, Netherlands;

关键词: Informal caregiving;    Family caregiving;    Quality of life;    Caregiving burden;    Institutionalised long-term care;    Community-dwelling older adults;    Ageing in place;    Home care;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12877-017-0620-3

 received in 2016-09-16, accepted in 2017-10-02,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundOur ageing society is putting tremendous strain on public health and welfare programs to meet the needs of ageing individuals. Promoting informal caregiving is one way for policymakers to reduce this burden. However, caregiving may be experienced as stressful and is associated with adverse health consequences. While quite a lot of research focuses on caregiving for community-dwelling older adults, little is known about informal care in institutionalised long-term care (ILTC). Therefore, the objectives of this study were: 1) to compare characteristics of informal caregivers and care receivers and caregiver outcomes - at home and in ILTC; 2) to study the association between these characteristics and positive and negative caregiver outcomes; 3) to investigate the moderating effect of the setting (at home vs. ILTC) on these associations.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted using the TOPICS-MDS DataSet. A total of 5197 Dutch dyads were included. The average age of the care receivers and caregivers was respectively 80.7 years and 63.2 years. Several sociodemographic, health-related and caregiving-related characteristics of care receiver and caregiver and two caregiver outcomes (i.e., subjective burden and care-related quality of life) were included in the analyses.ResultsCaregivers in both settings experienced comparable levels of subjective burden. Caregivers at home had slightly lower care-related quality of life than caregivers in ILTC. Several care receiver characteristics (i.e., male sex, married/cohabiting, more morbidities/disability, and less self-perceived health/psychological wellbeing) and several caregiver characteristics (i.e., female sex, being younger, living together with the care receiver, more objective burden, less self-perceived health, and more support) were associated with an increase in burden and/or a decrease in care-related quality of life. Some of these associations were stronger for dyads at home compared to dyads in ILTC.ConclusionsInformal caregiving does not stop with admission to an ILTC facility. Both settings need an informal caregiving policy, which is (1) tailored to the individual characteristics of care receivers and caregivers; (2) pays attention to the identified risk groups; and (3) reduces the negative caregiver outcomes and emphasizes the positive outcomes at the same time.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017