Shared Care, elder and family member skills used to manage burden.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this paper is to further develop the construct of Shared Care by comparing and contrasting it to related research, and to show how the construct can be used to guide research and practice.


BACKGROUND
While researchers have identified negative outcomes for family caregivers caused by providing care, less is known about positive aspects of family care for both members of a family dyad. Understanding family care relationships is important to nurses because family participation in the care of chronically ill elders is necessary to achieve optimal outcomes from nursing interventions. A previous naturalistic inquiry identified a new construct, Shared Care, which was used to describe a family care interaction that contributed to positive care outcomes.


METHODS
A literature review was carried out using the databases Medline, CINAHL, and Psych-info and the keywords home care, care receiver, disability, family, communication, decision-making and reciprocity. The results of the review were integrated to suggest how Shared Care could be used to study care difficulties and guide interventions.


RESULTS
The literature confirmed the importance of dyad relationships in family care. Shared Care extended previous conceptualizations of family care by capturing three critical components: communication, decision-making, and reciprocity. Shared Care provides a structure to expand the conceptualization of family care to include both members of a care dyad and account for positive and negative aspects of care.


CONCLUSIONS
The extended view provided by the construct of Shared Care offers practitioners and scholars tools to use in the context of our ageing population to improve the effectiveness of family care relationships.
Sebern
Margaret
M
College of Nursing, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 53201, USA. marge@sebern.com
D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D017028:Caregivers; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003142:Communication; D003657:Decision Making; D005190:Family; D005195:Family Relations; D006701:Home Nursing / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations