Summary
Family carers deserve to be engaged by hospital staff, so that they are able to give and receive information about a relative with dementia. They should be offered suitable opportunities to participate and have their say in hospital care. People with dementia and their family carer(s) should be considered together. The carer, the patient and ward staff are conceived by the authors of this article as a “triad”.
Understanding the perspective of family carers, while recognising – and hopefully avoiding – the “cycle of discontent” which may arise as a result of unmet carers’ needs due to their sense of exclusion, could help ward staff build effective working relationships with carers and patients’ families and thereby avoid preventable dissatisfaction, conflict and complaints.
Reference
Jurgens, FJ. Clissett, P. [and] Gladman, JR. [et al] (2012). Why are family carers of people with dementia dissatisfied with general hospital care? A qualitative study. BMC Geriatrics, September 24th 2012, Vol.12(57), pp.1-10. (Click here to view the PubMed abstract).
Note: This article was a by-product of a much larger NIHR SDO research project into the “Care of older people with cognitive impairment in general hospitals”.
[A brief reference to this item features in Dementia and Elderly Care: the Latest Evidence Newsletter (RWNHST), Volume 3 Issue 7, May 2013].
