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The purpose of this study is to explore the lived experiences of the constraints of older adult family caregivers with chronic diseases in caring for and accessing health services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study used the descriptive phenomenology qualitative method. The sampling method was purposive sampling involving 16 older adult family caregivers.

The results of this study showed three themes such as difficulties in health services in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic (complaints of services provided by doctors, older adult treatment control problems and difficulty getting to hospital health facilities); difficulties accompanying taking older adult medicine (older adult non-compliance response to taking medication and older adult medicine assistance); and psychosocial complaints caring for and accompanying the older adult (negative emotions for the older adult, difficulty interacting with the older adult and the economic burden of caring for the older adult).

Barriers to family caregivers in caring for older adults with chronic diseases can help health-care service providers understand and support families caring for and assisting older adults, which may contribute to the quality of life and care for both family caregivers and older adults.

This study showed that Indonesian family caregivers faced difficulties caring for and living with older adults with chronic diseases during the pandemic. Family caregivers’ experiences are essential when developing an intervention to support and manage health care for older adults with chronic illnesses.

In a previous study of authentic university academic caring (AUAC) at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), students perceived teaching faculty as the primary provider of academic caring and caregiving. This paper presents a research study on university faculty caring intelligence. University faculty caring intelligence is faculty's capacity to recognize the meaning and realities of caring within their performance, relationships and work environment.

A descriptive exploratory correlational research design was used to examine university faculty caring intelligence. A university academic caring framework and a faculty version of the Caring About Academic Care Inventory (CAACI) were employed. The university academic caring framework was used to guide the research. The faculty version of the CAACI assessed university faculty's discernments of AUAC within identified interfacing university academic caregiving points (institutional, instructional, academic management and academic counseling). The study sample consisted of 76 UVI faculty.

Factor score correlation completed in this work revealed strong relationships between the identified features university academic caring based on faculty perceptions.

Though the study is limited due to the sampling, UVI faculty's perception of AUAC was significantly evaluated. A model of UVI faculty caring intelligence was constructed from empirical evidence.

Studying caring intelligence of university faculty offered something new: a means to assess how faculty recognize the meaning of caring within themselves, their function, relationships and work environment. Caring intelligence can be used to predict faculty performance and their relationships within the university academic environment.

This paper aims to explore the role of frontline employees (FLEs) as mediators in transformative service processes within services targeting vulnerable users.

This paper is based on a case study of the development and implementation of a dementia village, and the data consist of documents, in-depth interviews and field observations.

The analysis identifies FLEs as mediators in six different roles. These roles highlight how FLEs perform as mediators, acting in between and for vulnerable users and thus supporting their well-being. Specifically, the roles explicate the mediating role of FLEs in the design and planning of transformative changes and in daily work practices.

The different mediating roles of FLEs presented here should inform care providers and managers of how employees can become assets for supporting vulnerable users’ well-being during the design and planning stages of transformative change and through daily service work.

This paper offers novel insights into the multifaceted roles of FLEs in transformative services. The findings add to the current debate on mediation in transformative services and contribute to the literature by extending and refining the established conceptual and empirical understandings of the role of transformative service mediators in consumers’ well-being.

This study aims to examine the perceptions and evaluations of Muslim COVID-19 survivors and health workers regarding the halal, business and ethical attributes of hospitals during their interactions related to COVID-19 treatment.

Descriptive qualitative research with semi-structured online interviews was used to gather insights from COVID-19 survivors and health workers who treated COVID-19 patients. The findings were then compared with existing literature on hospital services and Sharia attributes.

The study found that patients and health-care workers in hospitals are concerned about whether the hospital follows Sharia law, the quality of health-care and hospital services and the ethical conduct of hospital staff. This is especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when patients are more anxious about religious conduct and the afterlife.

Hospitals need to address halal attributes in all aspects of their services for Muslim patients and business attributes such as standard health-care quality, service quality and ethical attributes. Participants indicated that when these needs are met, they are more likely to revisit the hospital and recommend it to others.

This study contributes to understanding the expectations of Muslim patients regarding hospital services that meet Islamic ethical and business requirements. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study broadens the understanding of how to better serve Muslim customers.

This viewpoint paper focuses on the important role played by hospices in the UK in providing specialised end-of-life care for older people with complex needs – particularly for the growing number who choose to die at home. With demand for such care growing, the paper highlights the funding issues facing the independent hospice sector and the implications for hospices of receiving more state funding. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the challenges that hospices in the UK face in providing home-based palliative and end of life care for older people.

This a viewpoint paper informed by recent reports and research findings, as well as the author’s own work within the hospice sector.

The demand for specialised community-based and home-based palliative and end-of-life care is growing. The Covid-19 pandemic prompted wider discussion about what constitutes both “a good death” and good end-of-life care. This confirmed that most older people would prefer to end their lives free from pain, in familiar surroundings and not in hospital.

The specialised end-of-life care provided by hospices is rated highly by the regulator and the communities which they serve. In recent years, more attention has been given to providing “hospice at home” services, but coverage is limited largely due to lack of funding, the bulk of which comes from charitable fundraising. To provide a more equitable service, the fragility of the hospice funding model needs to be addressed.

If the state expands its funding of hospice care, it is important that charitable fundraising also continues to take place and is encouraged. This will help ensure that the good links between hospices and local stakeholders are maintained.

The funding of the hospice sector in the UK has been the subject of several reports both by governmental and non-governmental bodies, several in the last year. However, it is an issue of growing importance and the whole subject needs a fuller airing in academic circles.

This study aims to describe the current conceptualisation of self-management of dementia by family carers in the literature and from the views of dementia professionals and family carers, and to establish a more comprehensive concept of self-management of dementia by family carers.

A hybrid concept analysis included three phases: the theoretical phase reviewed the literature on self-management of dementia by family carers; the fieldwork phase interviewed professionals and family carers; and the analytical phase synthesised and discussed the findings from the previous two phases.

The findings revealed that self-management of dementia by family carers encompasses four domains: supporting care recipients, self-care, sustaining a positive relationship with care recipients, and personal characteristics and skills.

The findings highlighted the essential elements of the construct of self-management of dementia by family carers. The findings can be used as a conceptual framework of self-management and are useful in designing and evaluating self-management support interventions for family carers.

The demand for long-term home care services has been increasing in Taiwan due to the significant growth of the older population. In order to understand the crucial roles that language and communication play in providing better long-term home care services in Taiwan, this study aims to adopt a gerontological sociolinguistic perspective to investigate how professional care workers communicate with older people in this context.

Interviews were conducted with 58 long-term home care workers to identify their communication accommodation strategies for older people, considering their health conditions (dementia), personalities (grumpiness), living status (loneliness) and general principles of long-term home care communication.

The study's findings provide practical insights for long-term home care workers to enhance their communication skills while interacting with older people.

The results could contribute to improving the quality of care services provided to older people and address their specific communication needs.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to identify contextually specific communication accommodations to older people in existing literature of gerontological sociolinguistics that addresses language, communication and older age. The salience of the findings in this study can be further enhanced if they were applied in the development of training programs for future Taiwanese long-term home care workers.

The mental healthcare is experiencing an ever-growing surge in understanding the consumer (e.g., patient) engagement paradox, aiming to vouch for the quality of care. Despite this surge, scant attention has been given in academia to conceptualize and empirically investigate this particular aspect. Thus, drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) paradigm, the study explores how patients engage with healthcare service providers and how they perceive the quality of the healthcare services.

Data were collected from 279 respondents, and the derived conceptual model was tested by using Smart PLS 3.2.7 and PROCESS. To complement the findings of partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM), the present study also applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions to explore substitute conjunctive paths that emerge.

Findings show that patients’ perceived intimacy (PI), cohesion and privacy enhance the quality of mental healthcare service providers. The results also suggest that patients’ PI, cohesion and privacy have indirect effects on the perceived quality of care (PQC) by the service providers through consumer engagement. The fsQCA results derive that the relationship among conditions leading to patients’ perception of the quality of care in regard to mental healthcare service providers is complex and is best reflected as multiple and conjectural causation configurations.

The findings from this research contribute to the advancement of studies on patients’ experiences by empirically examining the unique dynamics of interaction between consumers (patients) and mental healthcare service providers, thereby enriching both the literature on social interactions and the understanding of the consumer–provider relationship.

The results of this study provide practical implications for mental healthcare service providers on how to combine the study variables to enhance the quality of care and satisfy more patients.

A significant research gap has ascertained the inter-relationship between PI, cohesion, privacy, engagement and PQC from the perspective of mental healthcare service providers. This research is one of the primary studies from a managerial and methodological standpoint. The study contributes by combining symmetric and asymmetric statistical tools in service marketing and healthcare research. Furthermore, the application of fsQCA helps to understand the interactions that might not be immediately obvious through traditional symmetric methods.

The essence of blockchain governance is a far departure from the cryptocurrency or Bitcoin that has led to innovation and changing the outline of medical services. The major challenge in medical services is the lack of accessibility of medical services and lack of awareness. A large group of the population belonging to an ethnic minority has a high rate of complications, re-operation and graft rejection. To connect with a minority group and address privacy and safety issues, blockchain-based e-health-care services have massive potential in the medical industry, especially from the perspective of the social aspect.

The study proposed a framework that describes the complex interplay of different stated factors, including perceived ease of use, trust, perceived usefulness and perceived security and privacy. The paper uses structural equation modeling to understand the ethnic minority group’s readiness to adopt blockchain-based e-health-care services.

It was found that all the direct relationships between variables are supported by the findings and have a significant positive relationship with the adoption intention. The tested framework will help regulatory bodies and marketers to develop support health-care service mechanisms for ethnic minority groups by addressing their issues related to security and privacy.

Blockchain-based e-health-care services have massive potential in the medical industry, although, its actual diffusion has not been explored much, with particular reference to an ethnic minority group. This study will explore the diffusion of smart health-care services with respect to ethnic minority group.

This paper aims to explore the value that care from a primary mental health care nurse (PMHCN) can bring to people with mental health (MH) problems in health-care delivery.

This study used a focus group of 20 PMHCNs working in primary care (PC) health settings in Saudi Arabia before using thematic content analysis to describe and explore their views and experiences of the integration of MH care into PC units. The researchers used a semi-structured interview format, which began with open-ended probes and proceeded to use of theoretical sampling based on emerging data related to their experiences and perceptions in the integration process.

Four main themes were derived from the thematic analysis of interviews: collaboration, knowledge and experience, awareness and orientation care and influential role.

This study’s use of qualitative research methods has certain limitations, including the small sample size of 20 participants, which means that it may not be representative of all primary MH nurses in primary health-care centers in Saudi Arabia. To make the results applicable to a broader audience, the researcher sought to moderate this limitation by including participants with extensive experience in multiple settings and nurses of different ages.

The cost implications of the PMHCN service are not yet comprehensively understood, but it is apparent that this model is not only regarded extremely positively by MH practitioners but may also have significant benefits in terms of patient outcomes. The configuration of local services and relevant patient demographics will affect the extent to which this study’s findings are transferable. Meanwhile, further research in this area could seek to provide further evidence about the aspects of the PMHCN service model, such as secondary care referrals and waiting times, accident and emergency attendances and patient recovery rates and the impact of providing such a service on health-care practitioners as well as its cost-effectiveness.

This study’s findings suggest that PMHCNs believe that their care improves the quality of PC for patients in PC settings. Elements of the PC placement that professionals particularly valued include their ability to assist patients in their own community and the inclusion of volunteer stakeholders who act as preceptors. The participants expressed a need for improvement of policy related to referrals within the clinics.