Informal caregivers' judgements on sharing care with home care professionals from an intersectional perspective: the influence of personal and situational characteristics.
Yvette Wittenberg, Alice de Boer, Inger Plaisier and 2 others
PMID 31037751WHAT IT FOUND
Dutch caregivers were generally satisfied about sharing care with home care professionals, but younger, higher educated, those with worse health, and domestic-help caregivers judged sharing care less positively.
Key findings
01Overall, caregivers were quite satisfied about sharing care, with no scores lower than 2.80 on a 1 to 4 scale.
02Younger caregivers, higher educated caregivers, and caregivers with worse self-reported health were less satisfied about sharing care.
03Five significant interactions were found, including care recipient's impairment interacting with caregiver relationship, employment status and age.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This is a cross-sectional survey analysis, so it cannot show that any caregiver characteristic caused less satisfaction with sharing care. The analysis used existing data, and the determinants were not considered before data collection. Only 292 caregivers of home-care recipients were analysed, from 7462 respondents and an original sample of N = 18 882. The response rate was 40%, and the sample was weighted for marital status, gender and age to adjust for selective nonresponse. Ethnic background was too small to analyse, so the paper cannot speak to cultural differences in caregiver judgement. Caregiver judgement was measured with four questions and had Cronbach's alpha 0.69, and the authors suggest the scale needs further testing. The study looked only at caregivers' judgements, not at professionals' or care recipients' perspectives.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Two authors were involved in developing the original questionnaire.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the lower scores as proof that home care professionals caused dissatisfaction or that changing nurse communication will improve sharing care. The study measured caregivers' judgements at one time and did not test an intervention.