Providing and receiving support through a tailor-made mobile app: a qualitative study on experience of professionals and family caregivers to persons with dementia.

BACKGROUND: The ageing population and the rise of persons with dementia (PWD) living at home have increased the need for support by family caregivers (FC). Research suggests that most FCs are unprepared for the complex role of informal caregiving. The use of mobile applications (apps) provide a cost-effective and efficient opportunity for community-based social care professionals to provide tailor-made support to FCs. The literature indicates that there are limited mobile apps available to meet the needs of the FCs to PWD living at home. The aim of this study was to explore how social care professionals and FCs to PWD living at home experience providing and receiving support through a tailor-made mobile app named STAV. METHODS: A qualitative descriptive design was applied. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 11 community-based social care professionals and 19 FCs of PWD living at home. The data were analyzed inductively using thematic analysis. RESULTS: The social care professionals and the FCs' experience of providing and receiving support through a mobile app was represented by the following themes: Accessibility to support - Bridging the gap, Engaging from a distance, and Limitations of the support. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the need for FCs to PWD to receive support that is tailor-made to their needs as caregivers. The findings from this study can help community-based social care providers plan and organize long-distance support for FCs to PWD living at home. The findings further support the use of a mobile app as a complement to traditional means of support for FCs to PWD which can facilitate their knowledge, awareness, and self-care management.

In their absence; intensive care nurses' experiences of communicating and supporting relatives from a distance.

BACKGROUND: Having a critically ill family member in the intensive care unit (ICU) is a challenging situation and ICU nurses play an important part in supporting relatives to make sense of the situation. Strict visiting policies inhibited the family's presence in ICUs during 2020-22, and the communication between nurses and families changed drastically. Information and support are at the core of the ICU nurses' profession, and the pandemic backdrop created a split between what intensive care nurses have a professional responsibility to perform and which actions were possible. To get a fuller picture, the aim of this study was: To describe intensive care nurses' experiences of communicating and supporting relatives from a distance while working during visiting restrictions. METHOD: A qualitative descriptive design using individual and semi-structured interviews with 16 ICU nurses. The interviews were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. This study followed the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ). RESULTS: Due to the visiting restriction during the COVID-19 pandemic, ICU nurses found themselves in a situation where proximity and time to develop an interpersonal connection with relatives disappeared overnight. The nurses' experiences of communicating with and supporting families is described in three themes: "Finding ways to create order out of chaos"; "Guiding the relatives to a fuller picture of the situation"; and "Feeling insufficient in their support". CONCLUSION: Visiting restrictions in the ICU meant that ICU nurses missed vital information about their patients as a person, which might have had a negative effect on personalizing and centring the patient care. But using a combination of digital and audio tools helped nurses to guide the relatives to a clearer picture of the situation as a whole. The support that nurses were able to provide to relatives was often insufficient due to the visiting restriction and as a consequence, they experienced physical and psychological stress.

Expressed emotions and experiences from relatives regarding having a family member living in a nursing home for older people.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to describe the topics relatives with a family member in a nursing home for older persons choose to talk about and focus on when participating in a nurse-led "Family Health Conversations" intervention. Family Health Conversations consisted of a series of three nurse-led conversations with each family, with a 2-week interval between meetings. METHODS: The Family Health Conversations meetings were tape-recorded and analyzed using qualitative content methods. The participants were relatives of family members living in a nursing home for older persons in a municipality in Sweden. RESULTS: The findings showed how the relatives talked about their suffering and difficulties concerning the new situation. The relatives talked about frustration and sadness together in a new way, with a focus on how to manage the future. They also wished that they had been offered an opportunity to talk about this with nurses earlier in the illness trajectory. CONCLUSION: The relatives had a significant need to talk about their experiences together within the family and together with the nurses. Nurses have an especially important task in supporting relatives having a family member living in a nursing home.

Nurses' perceptions about a web-based learning intervention concerning supportive family conversations in home health care.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To describe the perceptions that municipal primary healthcare nurses and municipal registered nurses had about a web-based learning intervention concerning supportive family health conversations in municipal home health care. BACKGROUND: Even though family health conversations are well grounded in theory with several reported benefits for patients and families, most working nurses have little or no training in practising family systems nursing including family health conversations. Continued learning is necessary for nurses, where web-based learning may be one answer of updating the professional skills and knowledge of nurses regarding supporting families. DESIGN: The study used a descriptive design and followed the "Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research" (COREQ) checklist. METHODS: Twenty-one nurses participated in an educational intervention that consisted of web-based learning and two face-to-face seminars about family systems nursing including family health conversations. The nurses were interviewed after completion, and the audio-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: The findings consist of nurses' perceptions regarding the disposition of instruction, the prerequisites for learning and a changed approach when working with families. The findings are further reflected on through Illeris' theory concerning learning triangle. CONCLUSIONS: The findings are encouraging for educating nurses in family health conversations at their workplace, with the purpose of supporting patients and families. However, it is important to be aware of the different dimensions of learning, in addition to the appraisal of social aspects and organisational circumstances when educating nurses as they influence the utilisation of the knowledge. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: This web-based learning intervention seems to be suitable for educating nurses in family health conversations and could be an appropriate step towards implementing these conversations in home health care with the purpose of supporting families.

Family Health Conversations have Positive Outcomes on Families - A Mixed Method Research Study.

BACKGROUND: Having a family member living in a residential home affects the entire family and can be hard to handle. Family members require encouraging and open communication support from nurses during and after relocation to a residential home. A Family Systems Nursing intervention, "Family Health Conversations" (FamHC) was conducted in order to strengthen the health of families having relatives at residential home for older people. OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to evaluate the responses to the Family Health Conversations in families with a member living at a residential home for older people and to integrate the empirical results with a theoretical assumption upon which the intervention was based. METHODS: A mixed methods research design was used. The Swedish Health-Related Quality of Life Survey and the Family Hardiness Index were administered before and 6 months after the intervention. Qualitative data was collected by semi-structured interviews with each family 6 months post-intervention. The sample included 10 families comprising 22 family members. RESULT: Main finding was that FamHCs helped family members process their feelings about having a member living at a residential home and made it easier for them to deal with their own situations. FamHCs helped to ease their consciences, improve their emotional well-being, and change their beliefs about their own insufficiency and guilt. Seeing problems from a different perspective facilitated the families' thinking in a new way. CONCLUSION: These findings showed that FamHC could be an important type of intervention to improve family functioning and enhance the emotional well-being.

Translation and Testing of the Swedish Version of Iceland-Family Perceived Support Questionnaire With Parents of Children With Congenital Heart Defects.

There is a need for a suitable instrument for the Swedish context that could measure family members' perceptions of cognitive and emotional support received from nurses. The purpose of this study was to translate and test the psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the Iceland-Family Perceived Support Questionnaire (ICE-FPSQ) and, further, to report perceptions of support from nurses by family members of children with congenital heart defects (CHDs). A sample of 97 parents of children with CHD, living in Sweden, completed the Swedish translation of ICE-FPSQ. The Swedish version of ICE-FPSQ was found to be reliable and valid in this context. Parents scored perceived family support provided by nurses working in pediatric outpatient clinics as low, which suggests that nurses in these outpatient contexts in Sweden offered family nursing only sparingly.

Nurses' perspective of conducting family conversation.

INTRODUCTION: Nurses are in a prime position to manage to support families that have a family member living in a residential home for older people. Nurses' attitudes about meeting patients' family members vary. Studies describe that some nurses consider family members as a burden. But some nurses consider family members a resource and think it is important to establish good relationships with them. AIM: The aim of this study was to describe how registered nurses (RNs) experienced to participate in and conduct the intervention Family Health Conversations (FamHCs) with families in residential homes for older people. METHODS: The intervention FamHC was accomplished at three residential homes for older people. FamHC is a family systems nursing (FSN) intervention developed to support families facing the ill health of someone in the family. One RN from each residential home conducted the conversations. The RNs wrote diary notes directly after each conversation. The RNs were also interviewed 1 month after they had each conducted four FamHCs. The diary notes and the interviews were analysed separately by qualitative content analysis, and the findings were then summarized in one theme and further discussed together. FINDINGS: The main findings were that the RNs experience the conversations as a valuable professional tool involving the whole family. The RNs grasped that silence can be a valuable tool and had learned to attentively listen to what the families were saying without interrupting, allowing them and the families to reflect upon what the family members said. CONCLUSION: The findings show that the FamHC can be helpful for RNs in their work, helping them to perceive and understand the needs and desires of the families.

Becoming visible - Experiences from families participating in Family Health Conversations at residential homes for older people.

Having a sick family member living at a residential home for older people can be difficult for families, who as a result often suffer from feelings of forsakenness and powerlessness. In response, the purpose of this study was to illuminate family members' experiences with participating in Family Health Conversations at residential homes for older persons 6 months after concluding the conversation series. Twenty-two family members who participated in the conversations later took part in group interviews, the texts of which were analyzed according to qualitative content analysis. Findings showed that participating in Family Health Conversations mediated consolation, since within such a liberating communicative interaction, family members for the first time felt visible as persons with individual significance. Family members reported a positive experience involving both being open to each other and speaking and listening to each other in a new, structured way. As a result, families were able to discover their family members' problems and suffering, as well as to identify their family's resources and strengths.

Experiences With Family Health Conversations at Residential Homes for Older People.

The aim of this study was to highlight family members' experiences of participating in Family Health Conversation (FamHC), based on families in which a family member was living in a residential home for older people. A total of 10 families and 22 family members participated in evaluating family interviews 1 month after participating in FamHC. The interviews were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. The main finding was being a part of FamHC increased family members' insights, understanding, and communication within the family. Getting confirmation from nurses was essential to cope with the new life situation, which also meant that they felt comfortable to partly hand over the responsibility for the older person who moved to the residential home. By being open and expressing their feelings, a bad conscience could be relieved. These findings showed that FamHC could be helpful for family members in adapting to this novel situation.