Browsing by Subject "older adults"

Family caregiving refers to the organization of home care for an older adult, disabled or sick person with the assistance of a relative or other close person. The number of elderly carers (> 65 years) of all family garegivers is significant. There are challenges concerning family caregiving for the older adults, due to increased age is in connection with decreased physical performance and increased number of medications and polypharmacy. Despite these factors, there has been little research on the medication safety in the family caregiving among older adults. The aim of this Master's thesis was to identify factors influencing the ability of a caregiver to cope with the medication management of the older adults. These factors were divided into subgategories: factors associated a family caregiver, associated a care recipient and system-oriented factors. The research was conducted as a method triangulation, in which the data were collected through two interviews with home visits (n = 21) and related questionnaires. The questionnaire data were quantitatively analyzed by calculating the frequencies and relative frequencies. The transcribed interviews were analyzed by abductive content analysis, combining both deductive and inductive approach. James Reason's theory of human error was used as the theoretical framework. Caregiving families participating in this research were very different compared with each other. Some family caregivers and care recipients were in good physical condition while others were severely disabled. However, the situation of the families was not individually considered when considering appropriate support services for the families. The workload of family caregivers due to the pain and the absence of days off contributed to the difficulty of medication management. The foremost system-oriented challenges in the management of the medications were: 1) difficult for the families to reach the physician and 2) for those families where assisted home care helped the caregiver, the families were not satisfied with its functioning. Due to the poor availability of physicians and the lack of a family physician, there was no one in control of the medication as a whole and there was inadequate monitoring of the medication. In the assisted home care, challenges were caused by the fact that home care visits were conducted over a wide period of time, which created challenges for giving the medications. Carers do not receive sufficient support from the society for the management of the medications. The medication safety of the older adults in the family caregiving is particularly affected by the difficulty of reaching a physician, the inadequacy of support from the assisted home care, the failure to recognize the individuality of caregiving families, and the caregivers’ burden due to pain and lack of days off. Support for caregivers must be at the forefront of society in the future, so that caregivers can cope with heavy nursing care and complicated medications, even without excessive self-activity.