Anderson, Sharon

Background: Research, practice, and policy have focused on educating family caregivers to sustain care but failed to equip healthcare providers to effectively support family caregivers. Family physicians are well-positioned to care for family caregivers. Methods: We adopted an interpretive description design to explore family physicians and primary care team members’ perceptions of their current and recommended practices for supporting family caregivers. We conducted focus groups with family physicians and their primary care team members.

Background: Family caregivers (FCGs) are an integral part of the healthcare system. Currently, FCGs provide 70%–90% of the care required by community‐dwelling children and adults living with complex chronic conditions and frailty. Despite FCG's contributions and the growing proportion of distressed caregivers, support for FCGs has not been a health system priority. Researchers have proposed training to enhance the competencies of health providers to work effectively with FCGs.

Introduction Family caregivers (FCGs) play an integral, yet often invisible, role in the Canadian health-care system. As the population ages, their presence will become even more essential as they help balance demands on the system and enable communitydwelling seniors to remain so for as long as possible. To preserve their own well-being and capacity to provide ongoing care, FCGs require support to the meet the challenges of their daily caregiving responsibilities.

What is known about this topic Family caregiving has become more onerous in the last two decades.Family physicians have the potential to reach the majority of caregivers throughout the care trajectory.The demand for primary care to support caregivers comes primarily from researchers or advocacy organisations.

Most research on stroke's impact on couples has focused on the transition to caregiving/receiving. Despite considerable evidence that marriage is the primary source of support in the face of chronic conditions, little is known about what happens to marriage in the context of care after stroke. To address this gap, we undertook a qualitative grounded-theory study of 18 couples in which one partner had experienced a stroke.