Going home from hospital: The postdischarge experience of patients and carers in rural and remote Queensland

Abstract

We conclude that carers are providing the bulk of post-discharge care of patients - a difficult role in which the difficulties are exacerbated when the patient or the carer or both is a long way from the home community.

Barriers to effective discharge planning: a qualitative study investigating the perspectives of frontline healthcare professionals

“…The lack of communication also influences the carer's ability to manage the patient at home. Such a finding would indicate that the improvement of communication skill is needed in both healthcare professionals, patients and carer [43,44]. …”

Psychosocial well-being and supportive care needs of cancer patients living in urban and rural/regional areas: a systematic review

“…Psychosocial morbidity and unmet needs may also be greater in rural/regional residing cancer patients, in part due to isolation from information and support services, extra demands/ expectations placed upon them and the larger number of roles that they might play [7][8][9][10][11]. Such patients may also be reluctant to accept services even when offered, due to a stoic and 'matter of fact' approach to life, concerns about privacy in a small community, and practical considerations such as availability of transport, financial issues and farm, small business and family needs [8][9][10][11].…”

Few urban–rural differences in older carers' access to community services

“…Our findings are consistent with previous research which found that service access is low for those caring for Health Service Utilisation spouses, even though they rated the quality of information on respite services as good. 4,[7][8][9]15 Australian research on this topic has generally been conducted with non-representative samples and has tended to focus on restricted populations, such as carers of people with dementia, while research from other countries is of limited use because of the substantial differences in health care systems. The low response rate and levels of missing data are causes for caution in interpretation of the findings of this study.…”

“…5 Particularly low service use has been reported among carers of people with neurological impairments [5][6][7] and by carers belonging to minority groups 8 or living in rural areas. 9 Older carers may have particular problems in accessing services. These may relate to their attitudes towards their own roles as carers, for example, the expectation that they should provide for all the care recipient' s needs, or constraints on their interaction with service providers, such as a lack of trust, or an expectation that services will not be available.…”