The experiences of older caregivers of cancer patients following hospital discharge

Abstract

These findings highlight psychosocial changes that caregivers experience over the 2-week time period following hospital discharge. Implications include the need to identify interventions to better prepare caregivers for the post-discharge period.

Current Advances in Palliative & Hospice Care: Problems and Needs of Relatives and Family Caregivers During Palliative and Hospice Care—An Overview of Current Literature

“…Regarding the year of publication, 36 out of 62 articles were published in 2017 and 28 in 2018. Countries where the respective studies were conducted were the USA/Canada ( n = 23) [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31], Scandinavia ( n = 7) [32,33,34,35,36,37,38], UK ( n = 4) [39,40,41,42], Germany ( n = 4) [43,44,45,46], Southern Europe (Italy, Portugal, Spain; n = 8) [47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54], East Asia (Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan; n = 4) [55,56,57,58,59,60], Australia/New Zealand ( n = 4) [61,62,63,64], other ( n = 4) [65,66,67,68], and multinational ( n = 2) [69,70].…”

“…Forty-seven studies reported on relatives of advanced cancer patient’s [9,10,11,13,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,34,36,37,38,39,42,43,44,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,65,66,67] and 15 studies included relatives of mixed patient samples [12,14,25,33,35,40,41,45,54,62,63,64,68,69,70]. The environment in which the patient received palliative or hospice care were home care in 18 studies [10,14,25,26,27,30,3...…”

“…A mixed-method study, which explored links between quality of life and self-reported caregiver communication identified four caregiver communication types: “manager”, “carrier”, “partner”, and “lone caregiver”. “Manager” reported the lowest physical quality of life, while “carrier” felt least prepared and “partner” and “lone caregivers” reported lowest psychological distress [20].…”

“…Three studies present further details on relatives’ needs regarding the patients’ disease and care transitions [20,21,68]. Interviews with older caregivers of cancer patients one and two weeks after the patient’s discharge from hospital addressed three main themes which were “connection of caregiver and patient wellness”, “caregivers’ struggle with control issues” and “communication with health professionals” [20]. Maintaining normality turned out to be the central need during transitions in families of patients receiving palliative care in a large qualitative meta-analysis.…”

Care provided by older adult caregivers to a spouse in active cancer treatment: a scoping review

“…Five studies were conducted in the USA [ 24 – 26 , 28 , 29 ], two in Israel [ 30 , 31 ], two in Australia [ 32 , 33 ], two in China [ 34 , 35 ], and the rest in various individual countries. Nine studies were qualitative [ 23 – 25 , 29 , 32 , 34 , 36 – 38 ], five studies were cross-sectional [ 26 , 31 , 33 , 35 , 39 ], and three were mixed-methods [ 28 , 30 , 40 ]. All included studies were published between 1994 [ 30 ] and 2021 [ 24 , 40 ].…”