The role of caregivers in interfacility care transitions: a qualitative study

A qualitative design was used to explore the nature of caregiver involvement in care transitions of patients being transferred from an acute care hospital to a rehabilitation hospital. Participants included older adults (n=13), informal caregivers (n=9), and health care professionals (n=50) from inpatient orthopedic units in two academic health science centers and one orthopedic inpatient rehabilitation unit. Semistructured interviews were conducted, audio-taped, and transcribed. Directed content analysis revealed the following four themes: watching, being an active care provider, advocating, and navigating the health care system. Participants described being actively involved in the care of their family member, yet they were not actively engaged by health care professionals to be involved in the care of their family member. There is a need to reconcile the tension between the level of involvement of caregivers in the care of family members who are patients and the level of engagement throughout the care transition. By providing relevant information and authentically engaging caregivers as equal partners in the care transition, they are better able to navigate the health care system post-transfer to the rehabilitation setting and discharge to home.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Patient Preference and Adherence

• Publication date

  2017-08-21

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Sociology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.2147/PPA.S136058PMID 28860727PMCID 5572948
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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