carers

This paper considers some of the challenges involved in studying informal carers in cancer contexts. It reviews current knowledge by examining, first, the dominant psycho-oncological research tradition that focuses on psychological distress among carers and, second, the more recent sociologically informed body of work examining what carers actually do and the contribution that they make to patient care. The authors suggest that this second sociologically informed approach offers an important counter-weight to the psycho-oncological perspective.

Although palliative care aims to support family members and informal carers, current evidence suggests that high levels of unmet need persist, and that this population is challenging to work with. This study aimed to 1) measure the proportion of patients that have an informal carer, 2) describe the clinical notes data on existing needs and coping, 3) measure the completeness of assessment data recording, 4) appraise the utility of existing informal carers’ sections in the patient files, and 5) make recommendations for improvement. An audit was conducted reviewing 145 closed patient files.

This article is about carers being discouraged from performing regular breast examinations for women who have a learning disability and who are unable to perform it upon themselves. This follows guidelines issued by the Cancer Screening Programme in 2000. The article looks at the need to perform breast examination, draws on feminist thought and explores the possible reasons for the guidelines, focusing on issues of abuse, consent and who should perform the examination.

Design/methodology/approach – A postal questionnaire was used in conjunction with analysis of policy and practice documents in wheelchair prescription and carers' needs.

This paper reports on the experience of informal carers whose family members have received occupational therapy. The qualitative study focused on one city. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six carers and the interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. The carers were generally satisfied with the occupational therapy that the care recipient received. The carers felt involved in the occupational therapy, although some had a lengthy wait for this.

Three expert commentaries have been written about the approaches to health and social care integration in Sandwell, Hertfordshire and Barking & Dagenham which were described in the last issue of this journal. They cover organisational, user/carer and international perspectives

This study investigated the feasibility, validity and reliability of the Carer Quality of Life (CarerQol) instrument among informal carers of long-term care users. CarerQol-VAS measured the impact of informal care by assessing happiness, and CarerQol-7D described burden dimensions. Participants included 100 informal carers of patients obtaining day care or living in a long-term care facility in the Netherlands. Construct validity assessed the extent to which differences in background characteristics were reflected in happiness scores with univariate and multivariate statistics.

Patient quality of life is an increasingly important outcome measure in medicine and healthcare. It is now widely used in clinical trials and in patient management for assessing morbidity and the impact of treatment. In the past, quality of life studies focused almost exclusively on changes in the quality of life of patients, but increasing attention is now being paid to the impact of chronic disease on carers.

The Parkinson's Disease Society has produced a DVD, Being There, which aims to answer the questions and concerns of people newly diagnosed with the condition. Being There provides an insight into symptoms, treatments and life with Parkinson's in general, and includes interviews with people with Parkinson's, carers, and expert healthcare professionals The DVD is divided into four chapters: introduction to Parkinson's disease; treating Parkinson's; living with Parkinson's; and about the Parkinson's Disease Society.