Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Scand J Caring Sci. 2021 Mar;35(1):220-232. doi: 10.1111/scs.12837. Epub 2020 Mar 13.
With governments worldwide reducing their involvement in the provision of institutional long-term elder care, community-based family caregivers (FCs) have become a key element in policies aimed at improving the quality of healthcare systems and maintaining their financial sustainability. This paper uses data from focus groups with FCs providing care to older adults to describe their approaches to and priorities for achieving care quality and sustainability as they work with formal health and social care systems. It describes FCs' views on information and communications technology (ICT) as potential supports for achieving these care quality and sustainability goals.
We held 10 focus groups from May 2017 to August 2018 and recruited 25 FCs through a mix of convenience and snowball sampling strategies. We employed an inductive approach and used qualitative thematic content analysis methods to examine and interpret the resulting data. We used NVIVO 12 software for data analysis.
Quality of care - as delivered by both FCs themselves, and formal health and social care systems - was a major preoccupation for our participants. They saw communications quality as a key aspect of the broader concept of care quality. Our data analysis produced a typology of communications quality from the FC perspective. Analysis of our data also revealed ICT development opportunities and available products in key areas.
Our findings suggest that the formal care system providers could be more caregiver-oriented in their communications by engaging FCs in the decision-making process and allowing them to express their own concerns and goals. The implication of our findings for those seeking to develop policies and ICT products in support of FCs is that these should focus on human relationships and seek to expand facilitative communications.
随着全球各国政府减少在提供机构长期老年护理方面的参与，以社区为基础的家庭照顾者（FCs）已成为旨在提高医疗保健系统质量和维持其财务可持续性的政策的关键要素。本文使用为照顾老年人的 FCs 进行焦点小组的数据，描述了他们在与正式的健康和社会保健系统合作时，实现护理质量和可持续性的方法和优先事项。它描述了 FCs 对信息和通信技术（ICT）的看法，认为它们是实现这些护理质量和可持续性目标的潜在支持。
我们于 2017 年 5 月至 2018 年 8 月期间举行了 10 次焦点小组会议，并通过方便抽样和滚雪球抽样策略混合招募了 25 名 FCs。我们采用了归纳方法，并使用定性主题内容分析方法来检查和解释所得数据。我们使用 NVIVO 12 软件进行数据分析。
我们的参与者主要关注护理质量 - 由 FCs 自身以及正式的健康和社会保健系统提供 - 。他们认为沟通质量是更广泛护理质量概念的一个关键方面。我们从 FC 的角度对沟通质量进行了分类。我们对数据的分析还揭示了关键领域中 ICT 发展机会和现有产品。
我们的研究结果表明，正式的护理系统提供者可以通过让 FCs 参与决策过程并允许他们表达自己的关注和目标，从而在沟通方面更加以照顾者为导向。我们的研究结果对那些寻求制定支持 FCs 的政策和 ICT 产品的人的启示是，这些政策和产品应侧重于人际关系，并寻求扩大促进性沟通。
