Supportive Care Needs and Associated Factors Among Family Caregivers of Elderly Patients With Dementia and Diabetes Mellitus: A Cross-Sectional Study.
Tuantuan Guo, Miaoqian Huang, Xinying Lin and 4 others
PMID 42048613WHAT IT FOUND
Family caregivers of older adults with dementia and diabetes rated physiological, emotional, and safety needs highest.
Caregiver burden was associated with most need domains, but not social needs. Needs varied by caregiver age, sex, income, and living situation.
Key findings
01Caregivers rated physiological needs most prominent, with 70.40% calling them very or extremely important, followed by emotional needs at 69.50% and safety needs at 65.70%.
02Caregiver burden was positively correlated with physiological needs (r = 0.582), informational needs (r = 0.282), safety needs (r = 0.483), emotional needs (r = 0.356), and spiritual needs (r = 0.336), but not social needs (r = -0.007).
03In regression models, female caregivers had lower informational and safety needs, and caregivers aged 60 or older had higher spiritual needs.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The caregivers were recruited by convenience sampling from one community area in Xiamen, China, so the findings may not apply to other places or services. The study was cross-sectional and used self-report questionnaires, so it cannot show that burden caused needs or that needs changed over time. It did not measure patient outcomes or test any intervention, so it cannot show that meeting these needs improves care. Caregivers had to provide at least 8 hours of daily care for at least 3 months and own a smartphone, so families with less caregiving intensity or no digital access were excluded.
Declared interests
The work was supported by the Social and Development Fund of Fujian Province (2022C034). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that caregiver support programmes improve outcomes. The study only described what caregivers reported needing at one time point, and it did not test any intervention.