Family Care in the Year After a Stroke or a Hip Fracture: Highlights of an In-Depth Study. Linkages Issue No. 2 Briefing Paper Series

摘要

Family care, the so-called informal care on which long-term care planners andpolicy-makers rely, has been extensively studied in the past decade or so. These previous, predominate studied focus on the relationship between an older person who clearly needs and receives care, and a family member who is acknowledged to be the primary family caregiver. By the time a caregiving situation becomes part of a study, typically, the roles have become somewhat stabilized. Often, the older person in the relationship has Alzheimer's disease; indeed, the field of family care has been quite preoccupied with identifying the factors that mitigate burden for family members who are involved with caring for a loved one with a dementia-type illness. The study reported here turns a different lens on family caregiving. Beginning with a group of seniors who had been hospitalized for hip fractures or strokes in one of 48 hospitals in 3 metropolitan areas, we described what patterns of family care, is any, followed discharge from the hospital.