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 Nationwide, an estimated 14.7 million family caregivers assist 7.7
million older adults who live in the community rather than in
institutions like nursing homes. These family members often help
with daily activities like eating, bathing and dressing. Many also
provide medical support such as scheduling physician checkups,
managing medications, cleaning wounds and giving injections.
“This issue is not a small or isolated issue but is widespread,”
said Jennifer Wolff of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health in Baltimore, who led the study.
“There is no silver bullet easy solution to simplify the management
of meeting complex care needs – this is an issue that is experienced
by individuals but is the result of the fragmented and complex
health care system and long-term care system that families often are
left navigating without any formal preparation,” Wolff added by
email.
To assess just how much unpaid care family members and others are
providing to aging loved ones who live in the community, Wolff and
colleagues analyzed data from two 2011 surveys with a combined 1,739
caregivers and 1,171 elderly adults.
Based on these surveys, researchers estimated that 6.5 million
family and unpaid caregivers provide substantial assistance with
medical needs, another 4.4 million offer some help and 3.8 million
don’t handle health care.
Almost half of the caregivers surveyed – 46 percent – helped an
elderly person with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. Another 34
percent assisted a loved one with a severe disability, the authors
reported in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Roughly half of family caregivers provide substantial help with
medical needs and spend around 28 hours a week assisting loved ones,
the researchers found.
Compared with people who didn’t offer medical support, caregivers
who provided substantial assistance with health care were 79 percent
more likely to experience emotional difficulty and more than twice
as likely to experience physical problems themselves as well as
financial difficulties.
They were also more than five times as likely to miss out on
important activities in their own lives and more than three times as
likely to suffer lost productivity at work.
For example, 20 percent of caregivers providing substantial medical
help missed work at least once in the past month because of this
assistance, compared with 7 percent of their peers who provided some
support with health needs and just 3.5 percent who didn’t do this at
all.
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In their personal lives, 28 percent of caregivers who offered a lot
of help with medical needs missed out on time visiting other family
and friends, compared with 13 percent of their peers providing some
help and 5 percent who didn’t offer any assistance with health
issues.
One limitation of the study is that the survey data can’t prove that
providing medical support to loved ones directly caused hardship for
caregivers, the authors note. The measure of family caregivers’
involvement in health activities was also limited to coordination of
care and management of medications, the researchers point out.
Even so, the findings add to a growing body of evidence on the
physical, emotional and financial predicaments family caregivers
often encounter because they devote so much of their time to
assisting elderly loved ones, Carol Levine, of the United Hospital
Fund of New York, notes in an accompanying editorial.
To minimize strain, caregivers should look for support that might be
provided by others, such as medication management and care
coordination, Levine said by email.
“Unlike personal care or emotional support, which requires hands-on
care, these are tasks where other family members, close friends, or
professionals like pharmacists or social workers can help,” Levine
added. “If you get help with at least some of the hardest parts, the
others can get your full attention.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/IZGqPC JAMA Internal Medicine, online February
15, 2016.
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