Caregivers*

OBJECTIVES: Although the number of palliative home-care teams is increasing, knowledge of what patients and principal informal carers expect from a home-care team is sparse. We aimed to elucidate this as well as evaluate a home-care team.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Individual semi-structured interviews with nine patients and six carers before receiving home care and 2-4 weeks after. In total, 26 interviews were conducted. Interviews were analysed with Template Analysis. Peer debriefing was performed.

Community dwelling people with dementia and their informal carers experience a lot of problems. In the course of the disease process people with dementia become more dependent on others and professional help is often necessary. Many informal carers and people with dementia experience unmet needs with regard to information on the disease and on the available care and welfare offer, therefore they tend not to utilize the broad spectrum of available care and welfare services.

Objective: To explore the optimal content and design of a clinical trial of an end-of-life intervention for advanced heart disease with patients, carers and healthcare professionals. Design: Qualitative interview and focus group study. Setting: Community and hospital-based focus groups and interviews. Participants: Stable community-dwelling patients, informal carers (PC, n=15) and primary and secondary care based healthcare professionals (HCP, n=11).