Unmet needs of family caregivers and primary healthcare practitioners of patients suffering from neurocognitive disorder

Clarisse Dibao

Keywords: Caregivers - dementia - primary care - needs

Background:

Interventions to reduce caregiver burden of patients living with neurocognitive disorder are slightly effective because they do not fit caregiver’s needs.

Research questions:

To describe caregiver’s needs to reduce their burden, and to identify healthcare professionals’ needs to increase the impact of a future tailored intervention on caregiver’s identified unmet needs in primary care.

Method:

Two-phases convergent design. We used a sequential mixed method study composed by a cross-sectional study (phase 1) and a qualitative study (phase 2) to collect needs of caregivers and healthcare professionals from an urban and a rural territory of primary healthcare in France. Both qualitative and quantitative results were then reported theme-by-theme using a weaving approach to highlight the different parts of a tailored and complex intervention adapted to the identified needs.

Results:

199 general practitioners (GPS) and 67 caregivers participated in the phase 1 quantitative study. 10 caregivers from the urban territory of care and 12 caregivers from the rural territory of care participated in the interviews, when 9 healthcare professionals participated in the focus groups. Results using the weaving approach highlighted the main caregivers’ needs, reported in both quantitative and qualitative data: early diagnosis; information and formation about the evolution of the Alzheimer’s disease and what the caregiver has to expect; coordinated aids; and psychological support.

Conclusions:

A complex and tailored intervention can be developed based on these caregivers and health professionals’ identified unmet needs.

Points for discussion:

What will be the next step of this study ?

How do cultural differences impact results?

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