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Older adults may experience a wish to die in the context of deteriorating health, a loss of autonomy, loneliness, or depression. Home care workers may likewise experience burden or symptoms of depression as a result of prolonged contact with this physical and emotional suffering. Training initiatives that can support the well-being of home care workers are therefore important.
To describe the typical profile of older adults who express a wish to die to their home care worker, and to examine whether a psycho-educational intervention for care workers exploring the end-of-life process and self-care strategies had an impact on the older adult's wish to die and on the care worker's perceived burden and depressive symptoms.
Quasi-experimental, longitudinal study involving non-randomized experimental and control groups and follow-up at 3–6 months post-intervention.
At the start of the study, all care workers (n = 126) provided sociodemographic information (age, gender) for themselves and the care recipient, and completed the Karnofsky Performance Status scale and the Assessment of the Frequency and Extent of the Desire to Die (AFEDD) interview to provide a baseline measure of the care recipient's functional status and wish to die. They also completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) as a measure of their own perceived burden and depressive symptoms. The AFEDD, BDI, and ZBI were completed again by care workers at 3 and 6 months post-intervention.
The typical profile of care recipients was a woman aged 85.5 years who required considerable support and assistance and who had at least occasionally experienced a wish to die, although these thoughts were not always verbalized. Scores on the AFEDD remained relatively stable over the follow-up period in both the control and experimental groups. There was no significant association between the older adult's wish to die and depressive symptoms in the care worker across the study period. However, a positive and significant correlation between a wish to die in the older adult and perceived burden in the care worker was observed at 6 months post-intervention in both the total sample (p = 0.032) and among controls (p = 0.028). By contrast, this significant association was not found for care workers in the experimental group (p = 0.376), suggesting that the psycho-educational intervention may have had a protective effect.
Although further studies are needed to corroborate and extend these findings, the results suggest that psycho-educational interventions aimed at increasing home care workers' understanding of the end-of-life process and which introduce them to self-care strategies may help to reduce their perceived burden when the older person for whom they are caring expresses a wish to die.
Home care workers may find it challenging to care for an older adult who expresses a wish to die. Psycho-educational interventions that enhance care workers' understanding of the end-of-life process and teach them self-care strategies could help to support their well-being and their ability to provide adequate care.
Precision Health (PH) holds the promise of revolutionizing healthcare by enabling personalized disease prevention and management through the integration of genomic data, lifestyle factors, environmental influences, and other social determinants of health (SDoH). However, the absence of a baseline assessment of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) of practicing nurses' capacity for PH hinders its integration. The purpose of this study is to determine the capacity of practicing Registered Nurses (RNs) for PH across the United States and to assess the validity and reliability of a tool designed for this use—the Precision Health Nurse Capacity Scale (PHNCS).
A descriptive exploratory study was conducted to evaluate the capacity of practicing RNs for this evolving phenomenon, PH, using a convenience sample. The survey was sent via email and made available to all members of the American Nurses Association (ANA) who work in a variety of practice environments. The ANA represents the over 4 million nurses practicing in the United States.
The majority of nurse respondents felt it is important for nurses to become more educated about all aspects of PH including SDoH but they lack confidence in the integration of PH. The PHNCS was found to be a valid and reliable tool in measuring the capacity of nurses to practice PH.
The incorporation of PH into nursing practice suffers an immediate impediment: the lack of know-how of the US nursing workforce. This inaugural data on KSAs for PH establishes a logical baseline from which the requisite education and training should commence.
Precision Health is an emerging healthcare approach in the United States and globally. Enabling it will require a nursing workforce prepared with the requisite KSAs. Determining the capacity of the nursing workforce is a foundational step to begin this process.
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