Chronic illness

Background: Understanding individuals' experience of accessing care and tending to various other needs during chronic illness in a rural context is important for health systems aiming to increase access to healthcare and protect poor populations from unreasonable financial hardship. This study explored the impact on households of access to free healthcare and how they managed to meet needs during chronic illness. Methods: Rich data from the life stories of individuals from 22 households in rural south-western Uganda collected in 2009 were analysed.

Australia has one of the world’s highest life expectancy rates, and there is a rapidly growing need for informal caregivers to support individuals who are ageing, have chronic illness or a lifelong disability. These informal carers themselves face numerous physical and psychological stressors in attempting to balance the provision of care with their personal life, their work commitments and family responsibilities. However, little is known about the specific challenges facing rural carers and the barriers that limit their capacity to provide ongoing support.

Purpose: Patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) or diabetes often require informal care. The burden of informal care, however, was not fully integrated into economic evaluation. We conducted a literature review to summarize the current evidence on economic burden associated with informal care imposed by CVD or diabetes. Methods: We searched EconLit, EMBASE, and PubMed for publications in English during the period of 1995–2015. Keywords for the search were informal care cost, costs of informal care, informal care, and economic burden.

Aim: Caring for older adults with chronic illness is associated with enormous physical and psychological stress on the informal caregivers.

Purpose. To describe and compare spousal and non-spousal caregivers of older adults with multiple sclerosis (MS), the nature and extent of assistance they provide, and the challenges they experience in the course of their caregiving role.

Introduction: Interest in the integration of health and social care services has grown in recent years amongst all Governments in Europe in light of the increasing numbers of older people and those affected by chronic illnesses. This poster offers a review of the “Album of 10 Good Practices of integration at European level” carried out within the Advancing Integration for a Dignified Ageing (AIDA)- Project (www.projectaida.eu/). This was funded by EU Progress Program with the purpose of highlighting common aspects of effectiveness.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive illness that changes the lives of patients and their spouses dramatically. The aim of this paper is to show how spouses of COPD patients integrate their tasks as informal carers with their role as spouses and the tensions and challenges involved in this. The study draws on qualitative interviews with spouses of COPD patients, recruited from the patient pool of ambulatory pulmonary services of two hospitals in Oslo, Norway. The spouses described their great efforts to re-establish normality and continuity in their everyday lives.

Experiencing and managing a long-term condition places heavy emotional demands on a patient or carer. We conducted disease-specific focus groups for patients or carers. We recruited adults with diabetes, heart disease or hepatitis C, parents of children with asthma or diabetes, and carers of people with Alzheimer's disease. Participants had sole access to a PC and were asked to use three Internet interventions, each for 30 min. We conducted 10 disease-specific focus groups in three areas of the UK, involving a total of 40 participants.

Importance  Caregiver burden may result from providing care for patients with chronic illness. It can occur in any of the 43.5 million individuals providing support to midlife and older adults. Caregiver burden is frequently overlooked by clinicians.

Objectives  To outline the epidemiology of caregiver burden; to provide strategies to diagnose, assess, and intervene for caregiver burden in clinical practice; and to evaluate evidence on interventions intended to avert or mitigate caregiver burden and related caregiver distress.

Aim.  This paper is a report of a study of the perceptions of family caregivers regarding the availability and adequacy of health and social care services for their family member with Huntington disease, and to compare findings from these reports in United Kingdom and United States of America samples.

Background.  Huntington disease is an inherited neurodegenerative condition. Family members often take responsibility for care of relatives with long-term conditions. Studies have demonstrated there are both positive and negative outcomes for carers.