Professional role

In Dutch policy and at the societal level, informal caregivers are ideally seen as essential team members when creating, together with professionals, co-ordinated support plans for the persons for whom they care. However, collaboration between professionals and informal caregivers is not always effective. This can be explained by the observation that caregivers and professionals have diverse backgrounds and frames of reference regarding providing care.

Background: The prevalence of dementia is increasing rapidly.

Background: Little is known about the general medicines management issues for people with dementia living in the community. This review has three aims: firstly to explore and evaluate the international literature on how people with dementia manage medication; assess understanding of medicines management from an informal carers perspective; and lastly to understand the role that healthcare professionals play in assisting this population with medicines management.; Methods: A mixed studies review was conducted.

Carers have an enormous amount of responsibility for the welfare and management of people with a mental illness in Britain, and many require help if they are to continue caring. Mental health nurses may be in a key position to offer support, but they are often unclear of what is required and how it should be delivered. Existing UK nurse-led psychosocial interventions for families often focus on the needs of the patient rather than the carer. This article describes a needs-led support service that has been designed for carers whose relatives are diagnosed with schizophrenia.

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study that examined how qualified district nurses’ conceptualized their role in relation to family carers and how they performed this aspect of their role.

A participant observational study involving fieldwork and in-depth interviews with six district nursing teams was undertaken over a 12-month period. Interview transcripts and fieldnotes were analysed by drawing upon the principles of dimensional analysis.

Alan Simpson explains how nurses can learn to support carers of people with mental health problems. 2 refs. [Introduction]

The majority of people would prefer to die at home if assured of high quality care and proper support for their families and informal carers. Home-care workers play a vital role in enabling patients to be cared for in their own homes; however, there is a lack of research on their role, focusing specifically on palliative and end-of-life care. A broad literature search was undertaken as part of a research study to explore the role of home-care workers in palliative and end-of-life care in the community.

Many support groups and resources for informal carers are geared towards meeting women's needs. However, a growing number of men are carers - with nearly half now male - and their support needs are neither recognised nor met. This article outlines the process of setting up and running a support group for male carers.