title: The effects of outpatient geriatric evaluation and management on caregiver burden.
abstract: This study investigated the effects of outpatient geriatric evaluation and management (GEM) on informal caregivers' sense of burden. We randomized 568 high-risk, community-dwelling older adults to receive either GEM or usual care for 6 months. At baseline and one year later, we assessed the burden experienced by their informal caregivers (N = 88). Compared with caregivers of participants in the usual care group, caregivers of participants in the GEM group were less than half as likely to report increased burden during the one-year follow-up period (16.7% vs 38.5%, p = .034). The findings suggest that GEM helps protect the informal caregivers of high-risk older people from the increases in burden that often accompany advancing age.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA. jweuve@hsph.harvard.edu
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Weuve
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Boult
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Morishita
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001294:Attitude to Health; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D017281:Cost of Illness; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D015577:Geriatric Assessment; D006302:Health Services Research; D006701:Home Nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008910:Minnesota; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors; D016526:Workload