Healthcare workers caring for residents of senior housing, apartments and private homes usually do not ask family caregivers about needing support in managing older adults’ care, according to a study published Friday by JAMA Network Open.
Jennifer Wolff, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and colleagues, analyzed 2017 survey data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study and the related National Study of Caregiving. The data included 1,916 caregivers, mostly spouses or other family members, who provided help with activities of daily living to older adults living in senior housing, apartment buildings and private homes. Their average age was 59.
About 900 of the family caregivers reported having interacted with healthcare workers of the older adult in the previous year. Eighty-nine percent of these family caregivers reported that the healthcare workers always or usually listened to them, and 72% said they were asked about their understanding of older adults’ treatments.
Only 28%, however, reported that healthcare workers always or usually asked them whether they needed help in their care of the older adult. The figure was significantly higher, 37.3%, for the subset of family caregivers caring for older adults with dementia.
“It’s a potential point of intervention for improving care,” Wolff said.
