Scopus scopus - exported 1/8/16

The preferences of informal carers are important to capture for healthcare decision making. This paper discusses how these preferences relate to the economic evaluation of health and care interventions. Three main issues are highlighted. First, there is a need to consider carer impact routinely in economic evaluations. Second, more debate is required around the ethical issues stemming from the inclusion of interdependent preferences in healthcare decision making.

The article discusses developments in long-term care and the availability of support for informal carers in the Czech Republic. Population forecast suggests that the process of demographic ageing in the Czech Republic will accelerate with the ageing of the baby boom cohorts of the 1940s and 1950s. Health and social policy has to address challenges of availability and quality of long-term care, and to develop support services to meet the needs of an ever growing number of older people and their families.

With the support of informal carers now recognised as a priority if people with significant needs are to live at home, Lesley Adcock examines the care given to an individual patient and her husband upon her discharge from hospital following a stroke injury.

AIMS: To evaluate the validity of the COPE index (CI) carer assessment tool within a study exploring perceptions of carer support, health, and wellbeing. To assess the utility and acceptability of the CI with health practitioners and informal carers of people with dementia, following the European COPE protocol.

Background: Changes in habitual sleep are among the most remarkable and important concerns of both patients with cancer and their informal carers. A dyadic approach in the assessment and management of sleep problems in patients and carers is a promising method of exploring concurrent sleep disturbances and establishing associations between sleep and sleep-impairing factors that may co-vary in the members of the dyad. The purpose of the present mini-review article was to discuss the current evidence, as well as highlight areas where future research is warranted.

The main objective of the study was to apply the recently developed Index of Capability (ICECAP-O) instrument to measure and value the quality of life of a representative sample of the older South Australian population (aged ≥ 65 years) according to carer status. A Health Omnibus survey including the ICECAP-O instrument, carer status (informal carer vs. non-carer) and several socio-demographic questions was administered in 2009 as a face-to-face interview to 789 individuals aged 65 years or older in their own homes.

Integrated care has been increasingly advocated as an approach to promote better coordination of services and quality of care at different levels. In this study, views were elicited from different users of the healthcare system (patients, informal carers and healthcare professionals) in four European countries. The views pertained to current states of care and the role that remote patient monitoring and telehealth in general can play to facilitate effective implementation of integrated care.

Once a synonym for death, cancer is now a prognosis of multiple probabilities and produces a world of uncertainty for carers. Drawing on rich, in-depth interview data and employing interactionist theories, Towards a Sociology of Cancer Caregiving explores carers' lived experiences, paying close attention to the ways in which spouse carers manage the ambiguity that pervades their orientations to the future, their responsibilities and their emotions.