Scopus scopus - exported 1/8/16

The active role (participation) that patients with chronic conditions are able to achieve has increasingly been recognised as a measure for the effectiveness of prevention and rehabilitation strategies. An empowerment scale is an especially effective instrument for measuring social participation and was applied to stroke patients in neurological rehabilitation for the first time. 26 stroke survivors and 26 informal carers who participated in self-help groups in Lower Austria were surveyed. The mean age was 63.9 (±10.4) (stroke survivors) and 61.9 (±9.6) years (informal carers).

This paper describes the process and outcomes of a project aimed at promoting community based multidisciplinary coordinated palliative care services in rural Australia. In preliminary health service needs assessment in rural Tasmania, key health workers appealed for additional information, support and education in palliative care. They expressed a preference for this education to be delivered locally to strengthen existing knowledge in communities and to take into account contextual factors.

France’s personalized autonomy allowance (APA) was created in 2002 to address the problem of caring for dependents. The allowance is in the form of a payment of a portion of the expense of personal and homecare services (“copayment”). This allowance is universal and is available to anyone over the age of 60. Eligibility and the amount allocated to eligible persons depends on the level of dependency, and the amount of expense remaining to be paid is based on income.

Issues of quality and accountability in social care for older people are of increasing importance. A key factor in determining quality is the extent to which older people themselves are satisfied with both the assessment of their needs and the services provided. The 1997 White Paper, Modernising Social Services, stated that local authorities will need to establish authority-wide objectives and performance measures to improve the quality and efficiency of services.

Chapter 2 in "Psychiatric Research Trends: Dreams and Geriatric Psychiatry".

The importance of evaluating systematically the effectiveness of hospice care has been noted for at least 20 years. There is, however, limited evidence about whether and how the care provided to terminally ill patients by in-patient hospices in the UK differs from that provided in NHS hospitals. In this article, we, therefore, present a comparison of hospice in-patient care and hospital care for cancer patients in the UK, from the perspective of bereaved relatives who had experienced both types of care during the last 3 months of the patient’s life.

Dementia may alter the experience of pain and the ability to communicate it; this will, in turn, result in poor pain detection and inadequate treatment. The aim of this literature review is to identify the observational pain scales that have clinical utility and feasibility for use with people living with dementia in the community by district nurses in their daily practice. It was found that a consensus could not be reached on which tool to use in clinical practice.

A review of the scientific literature devoted to informal care of demented people has shown two ways of conceiving this form of help. The oldest and dominant one sees caregiving as a burden; the more recent and less frequently reported perceives caregiving as a significant experience for the caregiver but also for the care receiver. This paper will focus on this second perspective, and describe some of the meanings that the care experience can have. On an affective level, caregiving is situated in the context of the relationship history, caregiving being the occasion to foster intimacy.