Questionnaires

Heart failure has a comparable prognosis to many cancers and accounts for approximately 4% of deaths in the UK. Despite its poor prognosis, few patients have access to specialist palliative care services. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) acknowledges that the palliative care needs of patients with heart failure and their informal carers are not currently being met. Its recently published guidance recommends the development of an effective multidisciplinary service model for such patients.

Aim.  This article reports on trends in health outcomes for family caregivers of hip-fractured patients and the effects of social support on these outcomes.

Background.  Little is known about the impact of caregiving on the health outcomes of family caregivers of patients with hip fracture.

In 2006 the Scottish Government provided just over £8 million to help 32 health and social care partnerships to develop telecare services. This paper presents a summary of the 2007-2008 evaluation of the Scottish Telecare Development. This evaluation focused on measuring overall program progress toward eight predefined Scottish Telecare Development objectives. Results indicate that the initial investment has resulted in significant savings to the health and social care sectors.

BACKGROUND: Despite considerable investment in research priority setting within diverse fields of healthcare, little is known about the extent to which different stakeholder groups share research priorities. Conflicting priorities may jeopardize stakeholder engagement in research.

OBJECTIVE: To identify the research priorities of different stakeholder groups within mental health care and examine the extent and nature of agreement between them.

Chronically ill children require several hours of additional care per day compared to healthy children. As parents provide most of this care, they have to incorporate it into their daily schedule, which implies a reduction in time for other activities. The study aimed to assess the effect of having a chronically ill child on parental employment and parental leisure activity time, and to explore the role of demographic, social, and disease-related variables in relation to employment and leisure activities.

Health is an important factor in the capacity of family and friends (informal carers) to continue providing care for palliative care patients at home. This study investigates associations between the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of current informal carers and characteristics of the carers and their caregiving situation, in a sample of Australian carers of palliative care patients. The cross-sectional study used the Short Form-36 Health Survey to measure HRQOL. It found carers to have better physical health and worse mental health than the general population.

This study describes and analyses the kinds of support received by different categories of informal carers, and the kinds of help that care recipients receive in addition to that provided by various categories of carers. Data were collected in a Swedish county in 2000, by means of telephone interviews. The net sample consisted of 2,697 individuals 18–84 years old, and the response rate was 61%. The results showed that relatively few carers in any care category received any kind of support aimed directly at them as carers.

AIMS AND METHOD To assess whether postal questionnaires, used as a local initiative, were useful in identifying carer depression allowing early support for community-dwelling carers of older adults with mental health needs. The Geriatric Depression Scale and a questionnaire collecting information on the carer’s circumstances were sent to carers of consecutive patients routinely referred to a community mental health team for older adults in south London. Rates of carer depression between postal questionnaire responders and non-responders were compared.

This study explored youth caregiving for a parent with multiple sclerosis (MS) from multiple perspectives, and examined associations between caregiving and child negative (behavioural emotional difficulties, somatisation) and positive (life satisfaction, positive affect, prosocial behaviour) adjustment outcomes overtime. A total of 88 families participated; 85 parents with MS, 55 partners and 130 children completed questionnaires at Time 1. Child caregiving was assessed by the Youth Activities of Caregiving Scale (YACS).