Background:Family members provide vital care at end of life, enabling patients to remain at home. Such informal care contributes significantly to the economy while supporting patients’ preferences and government policy. However, the value of care-givers’ contributions is often underestimated or overlooked in evaluations. Without information on the activities and expenditures involved in informal care-giving, it is impossible to provide an accurate assessment of carers’ contribution to end-of-life care.Aim:The aim of this study was to investigate the contributions and expenditure of informal, family care-giving in end-of-life cancer care.Design:A national census survey of English cancer carers was conducted. Survey packs were mailed to 5271 people who registered the death of a relative to cancer during 1–16 May 2015. Data were collected on decedents’ health and situation, care support given, financial expenditure resulting from care, carer well-being and general background information.Results:In all, 1504 completed surveys were returned (28.5%). Over 90% of respondents reported spending time on care-giving in the last 3 months of the decedent’s life, contributing a median 69 h 30 min of care-giving each week. Those who reported details of expenditure (72.5%) spent a median £370 in the last 3 months of the decedent’s life.Conclusion:Carers contribute a great deal of time and money for day-to-day support and care of patients. This study has yielded a unique, population-level data set of end-of-life care-giving and future analyses will provide estimates of the economic value of family care-givers’ contributions.

Context. The goal of advance care planning (ACP) is to help ensure that the care people receive during periods of serious illness is consistent with their preferences and values. There is a lack of clear understanding about how patients and their informal carers feel ACP discussions should be implemented. Objectives. The objective of this study was to synthesize literature reviews pertaining to patients' and informal carers' perspectives on ACP discussions. Methods. This is a systematic review of reviews. Results. We identified 55 literature reviews published between 2007 and 2018. ACP discussions were facilitated by a diverse range of formats and tools, all of which were acceptable to patients and carers. Patients and carers preferred health professionals to initiate discussions, with the relationships they had with the professionals being particularly important. There were mixed feelings about the best timing, with many people preferring to defer discussions until they perceived them to be clinically relevant. ACP was felt to bring benefits including a greater sense of peace and less worry, but it could also be disruptive and distressing. Patients and carers perceived many benefits from ACP discussions, but these may differ from the dominant narratives about ACP in health policy and may move away from the narratives of RCTs and standardization in research and practice. Conclusion. Researchers and clinicians may need to adjust their approaches as current practices are not aligned enough with patients' and carers' preferences. Future research may need to test implementation strategies of ACP interventions to elucidate how benefits from standardization and flexibility might both be realized.

Background:Family carers provide vital support for patients towards end-of-life, but caregiving has considerable impact on carers’ own health. The scale of this problem is unknown, as previous research has involved unrepresentative samples or failed to fully capture caregiving close to death.Aim:To quantify level of psychological morbidity and general health among a census sample of carers of people with cancer at end-of-life, compared to population reference data.Design:National 4-month post-bereavement postal census survey of family carers of people who died from cancer, retrospectively measuring carers’ psychological health (General Health Questionnaire-12) and general health (EuroQoL EQ-Visual Analogue Scale) during the patient’s last 3 months of life.Participants:N = 1504 (28.5%) of all 5271 people who registered the death of a relative from cancer in England during 2 weeks in 2015 compared with data from the Health Survey for England 2014 (N = 6477–6790).Results:Psychological morbidity at clinically significant levels (General Health Questionnaire-12 ⩾4) was substantially higher among carers than the general population (83% vs 15%), with prevalence five to seven times higher across all age groups. Overall, carers’ general health scores were lower than population scores, median 75 (interquartile range, 50–80) versus 80 (interquartile range, 70–90), but differences were more marked at younger ages. Female carers had worse psychological morbidity and general health than male carers.Conclusion:Levels of psychological morbidity among family carers during end-of-life caregiving are far higher than indicated by previous research, indicating a substantial public health problem. Consistent assessment and support for carers to prevent breakdown in caregiving may produce cost savings in long term.