EVALUATION of medical care

Aims and objectives: To explore how older patients with multiple chronic conditions and their family caregivers perceive their engagement and overall care experience throughout the preoperative phase of elective orthopaedic hip or knee joint replacement. Background: Patient engagement is a critical component of care necessary for improving patient outcomes.

Family interventions have been emphasized in the treatment of bipolar disorder (BPD) due to the bidirectional and entangled relationships between patients and the family system, and have benefits for patients’ symptoms and health; however, the effects of family interventions on family function and caregivers’ health‐related outcomes have not been well investigated.

Background and Objectives: Family caregivers (CGs) are critical to the provision of long-term services and support for older adults. Numerous intervention programs to alleviate CG distress have been developed and evaluated yet few have been implemented in community settings. This paper describes and presents outcomes from Community REACH, a community implementation of the evidence-based Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH) II program.

Background Informal caregiving offered by family members has been widely studied in the community setting, but little attention to date has been dedicated to that offered at the hospital level. Aims To describe the proportion of patients admitted to acute medical units receiving care from informal caregivers as decided by the family and to identify the factors affecting the numbers of care shifts performed by informal caregivers.

Respite services are vital in supporting informal caregivers in need of a break from their caregiving duties. A respite training program aimed at developing respite provider competence and improving caregiver well-being was evaluated. Trainees experienced significant growth in their perceived respite knowledge and confidence to deliver respite from pretraining to posttraining. An objective core competency assessment confirmed posttraining knowledge in 10 core areas of respite.