Empowering Informal Caregivers Palliative Care

Running head: EMPOWERING INFORMAL CARERS
Reporting Influence of Empowerment on Informal Caregivers in Palliative Care
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Author Note

EMPOWERING INFORMAL CARERS 1
Introduction
Institutional service provision models have largely shifted the communal experience
of end of life period is currently medicalized with the greater reliance on the professional
expertise to provide palliative care (Fabiana et al. 2017). Provision of end of life care is a
major health concern globally, and the increasing demands for such care are highly limited by
the current professional health care workforce. Palliative care is a specially curated provision
by healthcare providers to improve the quality of life for patients with a terminal illness and
assist their family members (Hoerger et al. 2017). One of the professional attributes that are
an important part of nursing practice is empowering the patients under palliative care to help
them gain greater control over actions and decisions affecting their health condition.
However, in addition to the professional workforce, the informal caregivers, such as family
members and friends, play a critical role in the provision of palliative care by providing
assistance to the patient to improve their psychological as well as physical well-being
(Meneguin, Ribeiro, and Marques 2016).
The following sections of the paper will review the importance of the empowerment
of informal caregivers by healthcare professionals in the provision of palliative care of the
patient.
Literature Review
In hospice care, informal caregivers are required to work in compliance with the
services of palliative care. The primary objective of palliative care is to ensure the greater
comfortability of the patient, with increased quality of life and free of pain, which is rather
insignificant with the usual health care goal of curing the health condition of the patient
(Mills, Rosenberg, and McInerney 2015). A research conducted by Moreno et al. (2016)
highlight the importance of empowering the informal carers in reducing and preventing the
burden suffered by the patients under palliative care. According to the authors, informal

EMPOWERING INFORMAL CARERS 2
carers usually lack the knowledge and skills to develop assistance tasks and a virtual carer
system that guides and provides a recommendation to the informal carers based on the
particular situation of the patient can be a critical intervention of ensuring empowerment of
the informal carers. Human-centered computing and ambient intelligence would be the
highlights of the virtual carer system.
According to Caswell et al. (2019), the informal caregivers are not usually prepared
for their role in palliative care, and the primary cause is the lack of support from the formal
health care providers, failing to teach the informal caregivers their role in the situation. The
primary aspects of empowerment to be offered to informal caregivers by the nurses are to
increase their confidence, giving them strategies and tips for managing the situation and
legitimizing their problems and concerns.
A research study by Aoun et al. (2015) supports these statements and conditions the
need for an intervention of introducing the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool, a formal
structure that assesses the need for informal carers supporting patients under end-of-life care.
Another research study conducted by Ates et al. (2018) highlights the importance of
recognizing informal carers as an integral part of the ‘unit of care.’ The nursing practice
needs to inculcate empowerment to informal carers by providing proactive care to improve
their knowledge and access to supportive resources such as respite care or other training.
However, in contrast to this, Olsman et al. (2015) emphasize the need for a balance of
empowerment and compassion in relation to the ethics of hope in cases of palliative care. To
correctly weigh the need for empowerment, the workers require solicitude and this critical
aspect should be taught to informal carers as well.
Lee et al. (2016) conducted a feasibility research project and highlighted that the
empowerment of informal carers could be achieved with a policy framework that allows the