Hughes, Sean

Background: Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) is an ongoing voluntary choice to forego food and hydration in an effort to hasten death. Ongoing caregiving is necessary as patients become weak and lose focus as a result of dehydration, but little is known about the process of supporting a patient through VSED. Objective: To explore the experiences of caregivers who supported a patient through VSED. Methods: Qualitative study with thematic analysis of transcripts of semistructured interviews with 24 U.S.

Introduction: There are personal and societal benefits from caregiving; however, caregiving can jeopardise caregivers’ health. The Further Enabling Care at Home (FECH+) programme provides structured nurse support, through telephone outreach, to informal caregivers of older adults following discharge from acute hospital care to home. The trial aims to evaluate the efficacy of the FECH+ programme on caregivers’ health-related quality of life (HRQOL) after care recipients’ hospital discharge.

Objective: The objective of this study was to understand the conceptualisation and development of a novel way of providing end‐of‐life care in a Cottage Hospice setting, with a focus on the role of family carers and volunteers within this care model. Methods: A participatory action research design enabled a situational analysis, together with change processes. The study setting was a hospice in the South of England, and its network of wider associates in the local health economy. Participants were purposively sampled to provide relevant information.

Background: End-of-life caregiving frequently is managed by friends and family. Studies on hastened death, including aid in dying or assisted suicide, indicate friends and family also play essential roles before, during, and after death. No studies have compared the experiences of caregivers in hastened and non-hastened death. The study aim is to compare end-of-life and hastened death caregiving experience using Hudson's modified stress-coping model for palliative caregiving.

Background: Addressing the concerns of family members is an important aspect of palliative and end-of-life care. One aspect that commonly causes family caregivers concern is the decline of patients' oral fluid intake in the last few days of life. Aim: To map the narratives in which family members' experiences of witnessing the diminishing drinking of a dying relative have been researched, review the findings within each narrative and consider directions for future research. Design: An adapted meta-narrative review approach.