Female

Background: Informal carers provide the bulk of palliative home care. They largely rely on general practitioners (GPs) and district nurses to support them in this role, yet little is known about what carers themselves consider important in this support.

Aim: To identify what informal carers valued in the palliative support provided by GPs and district nurses by using carers' own descriptions of such support.

Design Of Study: Retrospective interviews. Setting: Primary care in Cambridgeshire.

BACKGROUND: The international literature consistently shows that the psychosocial outcomes of the informal carers (caregivers) of chronically ill patients are influenced by factors such as personality traits and perceived social support, but few studies have investigated these variables in the caregivers of hemodialysed patients, and the reciprocal experience of chronicity.; METHODS: Fifty hemodialysed patients and their principal caregivers were recruited.

Aim This paper reports the prevalence and its related sociodemographic factors of informal caregiving by underage children in Austria. The quantity and intensity of caregiving activities, the motivation for and effects of caregiving and how this differs from non-caregiving children were investigated. Background Young carers are a worldwide phenomenon. Due to methodological and sampling problems, little quantitative data are available. Design Cross-sectional, descriptive study.

Physical health monitoring is crucial in the light of current knowledge about the risks associated with schizophrenia and its treatment. Cooperation between psychiatrists, patients and informal carers can significantly enhance patient wellbeing in this regard. Moreover, an advocacy approach elevates patients from being passive recipients of care to active participants in an integrated system that has outcome benefits for all stakeholders.

OBJECTIVES: Although the number of palliative home-care teams is increasing, knowledge of what patients and principal informal carers expect from a home-care team is sparse. We aimed to elucidate this as well as evaluate a home-care team.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Individual semi-structured interviews with nine patients and six carers before receiving home care and 2-4 weeks after. In total, 26 interviews were conducted. Interviews were analysed with Template Analysis. Peer debriefing was performed.

This article explores informal carers' experiences in caregiving for people living with HIV and AIDS. The search for meaning encompasses the ways in which carers find meaning in caregiving. A grounded theory approach was taken. Data were collected by means of 43 in-depth interviews and participant observation. Caregivers felt that it was important to have control over the emphasis that HIV had within their lives and developed an attitude that put the virus in perspective. Getting involved in HIV and AIDS work outside of the immediate caregiving relationship was evident.

The stress of care giving for spouses and adult children has been extensively documented in the empirical literature. More recently attention has been paid to children's involvement in family care giving. Qualitative studies in the social welfare field have highlighted the social restrictions caring places upon children. There remains a need, however, to understand what children are thinking and feeling in an effort to cope with their care-giving demands.

This focus of this article is a qualitative, evaluative study of three Crossroads young carers projects. Focus group discussions took place with 24 young people aged 11-16 years. Data were analysed using a thematic content analysis approach. The themes of the research were: experiences of being a young carer, peer support, opportunities for time out and purposeful activities. The personal characteristics of the participants give rise to a number of worrying conclusions, that relatively young people were found to be undertaking primary caring roles over long periods of time.

There is a growing body of literature concerning the needs of informal carers, however, there is little relating to the needs of carers who are also university students. There are a number of publications concerning the difficulties university studies may cause and in particular the stress that some healthcare students endures when they undertake clinical placements. Being an informal carer has the potential to aggravate any difficulties students may have in the normal course of their studies.