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Measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study

BACKGROUND: To ensure carers of people with dementia receive support, community services increasingly use measures of caregiver (carer) burden to assess for unmet need. This study used Bradshaw's taxonomy of need to explore the link between measures of carer burden (normative need), service use...

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Autores principales: Stirling, Christine, Andrews, Sharon, Croft, Toby, Vickers, James, Turner, Paul, Robinson, Andrew
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2875230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20465782
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-10-122
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author Stirling, Christine
Andrews, Sharon
Croft, Toby
Vickers, James
Turner, Paul
Robinson, Andrew
author_facet Stirling, Christine
Andrews, Sharon
Croft, Toby
Vickers, James
Turner, Paul
Robinson, Andrew
author_sort Stirling, Christine
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: To ensure carers of people with dementia receive support, community services increasingly use measures of caregiver (carer) burden to assess for unmet need. This study used Bradshaw's taxonomy of need to explore the link between measures of carer burden (normative need), service use (expressed need), and carer's stated need (felt need). METHODS: This mixed method exploratory study compared measures of carer burden with community services received and unmet needs, for 20 community-dwelling carer/care-recipient pairs. RESULTS: A simple one-item measure of carers' felt need for more services was significantly related to carer stress as measured on the GHQ-30. Qualitative data showed that there are many potential stressors for carers, other than those related to the care-giving role. We found a statistically significant rank correlation (p = 0.01) between carer's use of in-home respite and the care-recipient's cognitive and functional status which is likely to have been related to increased requirement for carer vigilance, effort and the isolation of spouse carers. Otherwise, there were no statistically significant relationships between carer burden or stress and level of service provision. CONCLUSION: When carers are stressed or depressed, they can recognise that they would like more help from services, even if measures of carer burden and care recipient status do not clearly indicate unmet service needs. A question designed to elicit carer' felt need may be a better indicator of service need, and a red flag for recognising growing stress in carers of people with dementia. Assessment of service needs should recognise the fallibility of carer burden measures, given that carer stress may not only come from caring for someone with dementia, but can be significantly compounded by other life situations.
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spelling pubmed-28752302010-05-25 Measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study Stirling, Christine Andrews, Sharon Croft, Toby Vickers, James Turner, Paul Robinson, Andrew BMC Health Serv Res Research article BACKGROUND: To ensure carers of people with dementia receive support, community services increasingly use measures of caregiver (carer) burden to assess for unmet need. This study used Bradshaw's taxonomy of need to explore the link between measures of carer burden (normative need), service use (expressed need), and carer's stated need (felt need). METHODS: This mixed method exploratory study compared measures of carer burden with community services received and unmet needs, for 20 community-dwelling carer/care-recipient pairs. RESULTS: A simple one-item measure of carers' felt need for more services was significantly related to carer stress as measured on the GHQ-30. Qualitative data showed that there are many potential stressors for carers, other than those related to the care-giving role. We found a statistically significant rank correlation (p = 0.01) between carer's use of in-home respite and the care-recipient's cognitive and functional status which is likely to have been related to increased requirement for carer vigilance, effort and the isolation of spouse carers. Otherwise, there were no statistically significant relationships between carer burden or stress and level of service provision. CONCLUSION: When carers are stressed or depressed, they can recognise that they would like more help from services, even if measures of carer burden and care recipient status do not clearly indicate unmet service needs. A question designed to elicit carer' felt need may be a better indicator of service need, and a red flag for recognising growing stress in carers of people with dementia. Assessment of service needs should recognise the fallibility of carer burden measures, given that carer stress may not only come from caring for someone with dementia, but can be significantly compounded by other life situations. BioMed Central 2010-05-13 /pmc/articles/PMC2875230/ /pubmed/20465782 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-10-122 Text en Copyright ©2010 Stirling et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research article
Stirling, Christine
Andrews, Sharon
Croft, Toby
Vickers, James
Turner, Paul
Robinson, Andrew
Measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study
title Measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study
title_full Measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study
title_fullStr Measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study
title_full_unstemmed Measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study
title_short Measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study
title_sort measuring dementia carers' unmet need for services - an exploratory mixed method study
topic Research article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2875230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20465782
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-10-122
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