Opinion

The article calls on hospitals to dedicate a space for family caregivers to relieve them from stress and loneliness when a family member is hospitalized. Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in White Plains, New York established the first caregiver resource center inside a rehab hospital. Several factors were cited by caregiver advocates that will convince hospitals to create caregiver centers, including the addition of penalties under the Affordable Care Act for avoidable readmissions.

Studies have documented the experiences of families with seriously ill children, but few have focused on the spiritual needs of families confronted with a child's imminent death.

By its definition, care is not (financially) reimbursed. However, care recipients often provide material and/or financial support to their carers, which may be related to a range of psychological and social outcomes, such as the financial fragility of care recipients, changes in the quality of relationships and care, or psychological burden.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is widely acknowledged as a landmark document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives from all over the world, the declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard for all peoples and all nations. The declaration sets out a series of articles that articulate a number of fundamental human rights to be universally protected.

For persons with Parkinson’s disease, the loss of autonomy in daily life leads to a high level of dependency on relatives’ support. Such dependency strongly correlates with high levels of perceived stress and psychosocial burden in informal caregivers. Global developments, such as demographic change and the associated thinning infrastructure in rural areas cause a continuously growing need for medical and nursing care. However, this need is not being adequately met. The resulting care gap is being made up by unpaid or underpaid work of informal caregivers.

According to a new Fidelity study, 4 in 10 working caregivers are at risk of choosing between their job and family demands in the next year. [...] when Anthem Inc. implemented caregiving platform ianacare as a benefit for their working caregivers, they saw 83% increase in productivity, 30% decrease in feelings of stress and burden, and a 96% employee satisfaction score. While we wait to see the outcome of federal paid leave, let’s make changes to provide better benefits and options for working family caregivers.

We are facing the 2050 aging wave that is calling us to prepare several strands of interventions to be ready on time. There is a need to foster the digital transformation of the care sector by the improvement of the digital literacy among older people, carers and care workers also using codesign approaches for the ICT usability and adoption in the social and health care domains. Moreover we need to switch from a reactive care model based on chronicity towards the adoption of a new one where citizens will be the co-maker of their own health.