Assignment on Informal Carer During End of Life Care

Running head:INFORMAL CARER DURING END OF LIFE CARE
Introduction
The person with an adverse health condition that becomes incurable is referred to an End-of-life
(EOL) care. EOL comprises of a range of factors which include palliative care, medical experimentation,
patient’s right to self-determination and efficacy of different medical interventions.it is necessary for the
informal carers to assess the signs of approaching death after analyzing symptom management. End-of-
life care includes non-medical support, along with medical interventions. According to the core values of
National Palliative Care Standards, this literature review will speak about “the strengths and limitation of
the care recipient and their caregivers and family to empower them in managing their situation”. This
literature review will shed light on the necessity of the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tools (CSNAT),
internet-based peer support, social support and emotional support of the informal caregivers. A brief
study on the depressed condition of the caregivers and financial condition has been interpreted. The
project aims to explore core values along with providing informal carer during end-of-life care.
Body
Article 1 comments on the experience of home-based family care to terminally ill people by
considering psychological, physical, practical, financial, spiritual and social costs. The Carer Support
Needs Assessment Tools (CSNAT) indicate requirement of support to manage their family members
along with taking care of their health and well being. To do this study, 233 family caregivers receiving
CSNAT shared their experience through brief end-of-trial of semi-structured telephonic interviews. This
study was done on Silver Chain Hospice Care service, and evaluation was done on only one part of the
three-part evaluation of wedge cluster trial (Aoun, Deas, Toye, Ewing, Grande & Stajduhar 2015). Article
2 is engaged in finding high-quality end-of-life care for patientswith dementia by family carers. To study
this, the guidelines provided by the Economic and Social Research Council were followed by making a
systematic approach. MEDLINE, CINAHL, SCIE, PsyclNF and EMBASE were taken into consideration
for the data sources (Davies, Maio, Rait & Iliffe 2014). Article 3 focusses on the financial cost that the
end of life care recipient’s family bears. To study a search strategy using seven databases which include
MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, Web of Knowledge, Cochrane and Econlit was taken into
consideration(Gardiner, Brereton, Frey, Wilkinson-Meyers & Gott 2014). Article 4 determines whether
an intensive care unit (ICU) communication facilitator is capable of reducing family stress while
intensifying end-of-life care. For this study, a randomized trial was conducted in two hospitals. The
patients chosen have mortality greater or equal to 30%. Facilitators provided communication between
families and clinicians (Curtis, Treece, Nielsen, Gold, Ciechanowski, Shannon, Khandelwal, Young &
Engelberg 2016). Article 5 is based on finding the key components of internet-based interventions that are
focussed in supporting the caregivers to people with dementia and asses its effectiveness. To study this, a

1INFORMAL CARER DURING END OF LIFE CARE.
narrative synthesis approach is adopted with thematic analysis and tabulation. A systematic review of
randomized controlled trials, quantitative, quasi-experimental designs and qualitative studies were
conducted following the guidelines provided by Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (Hopwood,
Walker, McDonagh, Rait, Walters, Iliffe, Ross & Davies 2018). Article 6 determines the impact of early
and delayed palliative care interventions for caregivers of patients with advanced cancer. A total of 122
caregivers of patients were assigned to receive weekly telephone coaching sessions, bereavement call and
a monthly follow up (Dionne-Odom, Azuero, Lyons, Hull, Tosteson, Li, Li, Frost, Dragnev, Akyar &
Hegel 2015). The purpose of Article 7 is to identify the support and the needs of the caregivers dealing
with a person having a chronic illness thus helping them to manage the situation effectively. This study
aims to fulfil the needs of the caregivers by different types of telephone services. A qualitative design
with semi-structured interviews was made taking 34 caregivers for the study (Ploeg, Biehler, Willison,
Hutchison & Blythe 2016)
Table
Key theme <Author/s and Date>
The Carer Support Needs
Assessment Tools
(CSNAT)
Aoun, Deas, Toye, Ewing, Grande & Stajduhar 2015
High-quality end-of-life
care
Davies, Maio, Rait & Iliffe 2014
Financial stress during end
of life care
Gardiner, Brereton, Frey, Wilkinson-Meyers & Gott 2014)
Communication facilitator Curtis, Treece, Nielsen, Gold, Ciechanowski, Shannon, Khandelwal,
Young & Engelberg 2016
Internet-based
interventions
Hopwood, Walker, McDonagh, Rait, Walters, Iliffe, Ross & Davies
2018
Early and delayed
palliative care interventions
Dionne-Odom, Azuero, Lyons, Hull, Tosteson, Li, Li, Frost, Dragnev,
Akyar & Hegel 2015
Support and the needs of
the caregivers
Ploeg, Biehler, Willison, Hutchison & Blythe 2016
Discussion
According to the study of Article 1, the author identifies positive experience using CSNAT has
been reported. The strengths and limitations of the informal carers were identified and CSNAT is found to
be effective as they were engaged in conversation about their priorities and needs. CSNAT is highly
useful for informal carers to overcome their reluctant nature and help themselves by identifying their