What are the barriers and facilitators to effective working relationships between nurses and informal carers providing end of life care at home?
Abstract
Background
The need to care for informal carers is increasing recognised in Scottish government
policy and is implicit in good nursing practice. The professional in most regular
contact with the informal carer providing end of life care at home is the district or
community nurse, consequently this relationship is key to the successful provision of
person centred care for the dying person and for all members of the care team. This
study will explore the perceived barriers and facilitators to working with informal
carers from the perspective of the nurse.
Literature review
The literature review focusses on identifying barriers and faciltators to effective
working relationships between nurses and informal carers providing end of life care
at home. The databases CINAHL, Medline and Psychinfo were searched and the
British Journal of Community Nursing was also searched. Five themes were
identified: identifying carers; the carer’s perspective; training for carers; nursing
perspective; and structured communication tools. There was no literature specifically
looking at the difficulties of working with an informal carer. The literature suggested
that nurses lack confidence in their communication skills and have difficulty
allocating time to supporting the carer and that a structured communication tool such
as the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool (CSNAT) can help.