Challenges and needs of informal caregivers in elderly care: Qualitative research in four European countries, the TRACE project.

BACKGROUND: Providing informal care may affects caregivers' life in different ways. Determining the needs of caregivers and supporting them can improve both the quality of life of the caregivers, as well as the elderly they take care of. OBJECTIVE: To explore the experiences and needs of the informal caregivers in four countries. DESIGN: Qualitative research method was used in the study. METHODS: The qualitative data was collected through focus groups and individual interviews between December 2016-May 2017. In all countries interviews were conducted in the mother language of the informants. Informants of the qualitative research were adult people who take primary care of an individual with chronic diseases, aged 65 years or older. Data were collected from 72 informal caregivers from four European countries. Inductive content analysis was performed. RESULTS: Informal caregivers identified 2 themes, 5 subthemes, 19 categories and 7 subtcategories. The themes highlighted two major issues: informal caregiver's challenges and needs related to the management of care of elderly and caregivers' personal needs. CONCLUSION: The important and charming results of the present study are, difficulties of managing caregiver's own life, and coping with emotions are common in four countries. Identifying challenges and needs of informal caregivers enable healthcare professionals to develop care strategies and plan interventions focused to support and help to reduce the burden of care for elderly with chronic diseases.

Is training for informal caregivers and their older persons helpful? A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The steady increase in the number of people suffering from chronic diseases and increasing life expectancy raises new demands on health care. At the same time, the need for informal caregivers is increasing. This study aims to perform a systematic review of the methodologies used to identify effect of different types of training on informal caregivers and their older persons. METHODS: MEDLINE (PubMed), CINAHL and Ovid were searched from December 2016 and April 2017. The following keywords were used; "informal caregiver", "training" "elderly", older persons". Identified publications were screened by using the following inclusion criteria; systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials, prospective cohort and multicentre studies, English language full text journals, samples or interventions that included caregivers of older persons and published in last 10 years. RESULTS: Twenty four studies (12 randomised control trials, 8 intervention studies and 4 systematic reviews) were included. Most of the randomized controlled trials involved both caregivers and elderly. Pretests and post-tests were used in intervention studies (5 out of the 8 studies). ICT-based, psychosocial interventions on family caregivers' education program for caregivers were applied. Caregivers following a supportive educative learning had a significantly better quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this systematic review suggest that support interventions for caregivers can be effective in reducing caregivers' stress, with a consequent improvement of the quality of care. However, results are based on relatively small studies, reporting somewhat controversial findings supporting the need to perform further research in this field.