Sinai Health System, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Carleton University Sprott School of Business, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2022 Feb;68(1):183-195. doi: 10.1177/0020764020983866. Epub 2020 Dec 29.
The majority of family caregivers (CG) caring for older adults, many of whom have dementia, are employees concurrently contending with the work demands and the stress and conflicts of caregiving. Both employers and CG employees are challenged by the need to address this problem.
A cross-sectional Canadian survey was distributed nationally to working informal CGs of older adults in 2015 to 2016. It was designed to investigate the relative predictive roles of caregiving variables, job demands, balancing work and caregiving variables, and work-related factors on work and employee outcomes. Our sample was comprised of employees ( = 1,839) who were concurrently providing informal care for an older adult with specific attention to those caring for care recipients (CR) with dementia. We employed hierarchical and ordinal multiple regression to examine CG and caregiving characteristics, family and job demands, and balancing job-caregiving variables as predictors of work-related outcomes including work engagement, employment/employee changes index, absenteeism, and intent-to-turnover.
After controlling for CGs' age, sex, and family financial situation, we found dementia demands, job-caregiving conflict, effective manager, and organizational culture were significant predictors of five out of six work and employee outcomes. Role overload was significantly associated with four outcomes.
To our knowledge, this is the first study of this size to explore the association of these predictive variables with work-related outcomes and to refine the understanding of the profile of employed CGs of older adults with dementia. Sustaining working CGs of older adults may require new 'talent management' approaches rather than simply increasing the number of benefits.
大多数照顾老年人的家庭护理员（CG）都有工作，其中许多人照顾的是患有痴呆症的老年人，他们同时面临着工作要求、照顾压力和冲突。雇主和 CG 员工都面临着解决这个问题的挑战。
2015 年至 2016 年，我们在加拿大进行了一项横断面调查，向照顾老年人的在职非正式 CG 发放了全国性的调查问卷。该调查旨在研究照顾变量、工作需求、平衡工作和照顾变量以及与工作相关的因素对工作和员工结果的相对预测作用。我们的样本由同时为患有痴呆症的老年患者提供非正式照顾的员工（n=1839）组成。我们采用分层和有序多回归分析来检验 CG 和照顾特征、家庭和工作需求以及平衡工作-照顾变量作为工作相关结果（包括工作投入、雇佣/员工变化指数、缺勤和离职意向）的预测因素。
在控制了 CG 的年龄、性别和家庭财务状况后，我们发现痴呆症需求、工作-照顾冲突、有效的经理和组织文化是六个工作和员工结果中的五个的显著预测因素。角色过载与四个结果显著相关。
据我们所知，这是第一项研究这些预测变量与工作相关结果的关联，并进一步了解有痴呆症的老年患者在职 CG 的特征的研究。维持有工作的老年 CG 可能需要新的“人才管理”方法，而不仅仅是增加福利。
