Hendrix, Cristina

Background: Caregivers play a crucial role in taking over the important task of looking after patients post-hospitalisation. Caregivers who are unfamiliar with patients' post-discharge care often experience caregiver stress, while patients may see deterioration in their condition. As caregivers are our core partners in healthcare, it is therefore necessary for patient navigators to recognise, assess and address caregivers' needs or burden as early as on admission to hospital.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of Helping Invested Families Improve Veterans' Experiences Study (HI-FIVES), a skills training program for caregivers of persons with functional or cognitive impairments. Design: A two-arm RCT. Setting: Single Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Participants: Patients and their primary caregivers referred in the past 6 months to home and community-based services or geriatrics clinic. Intervention: All caregivers received usual care.

Introduction Adults with cancer frequently report symptoms such as decline in cognitive function throughout the trajectory of illness. Patients with cognitive deficits need support and assistance from their informal caregivers and often rely on them to manage their symptoms based on their degree of deficits. Patients spend a significant amount of time with their informal caregivers and become interdependent with each other.

Purpose: This study addressed the experiences of older caregivers of cancer patients in the 2 weeks following a hospital discharge. It sought to understand the challenges they face in providing supportive care to patients at home. Methods: Qualitative descriptive interviews with a narrative approach were conducted with each caregiver at 1 and 2 weeks following the patient’s discharge from the hospital. A thematic analysis approach was used to identify the themes that emerged from the caregiver interviews.