The Experience of Adult Korean Children Caring for Parents Institutionalized with Dementia

Abstract

연구의 필요성만성질환이나Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore and describe the experience of adult Korean children who are caregivers for parents institutionalized with dementia. Methods: Participants were fourteen adult children caregivers of elders institutionalized with dementia. Data were collected through in-depth unstructured interviews with individual participants from August to November, 2012. Theoretical sampling was used to the point of theoretical saturation. Data were analyzed using Strauss and Corbin's Grounded Theory Method. Results: From open coding, 67 concepts, 29 sub-categories, and 14 categories were identified. Analysis revealed that the core category of the experience of adult children caring for their parents institutionalized with dementia was 'enduring the role of a prop' consisting of four phases: initial turmoil, exploration, role adjustment, and acclimation. To manage the role of a prop, participants utilized various action/interactional strategies such as overcoming the unfamiliarity, overseeing the nursing home care, and counterbalancing the caring roles. As a result, participants experienced ambivalence towards the existence of parents with dementia, changes in family relationships, altered viewpoint towards nursing homes, and restructuring of life. Conclusion: In-depth understanding of the experience will guide nurses to promote effective interventions in order to better support the Korean family caregivers of parents institutionalized with dementia. If the original work is properly cited and retained without any modification or reproduction, it can be used and re-distributed in any format and medium.

Development and Validation of the Scale for Partnership in Care—for Family (SPIC-F)

“…With such a heavy caregiving burden, families reach their limit in caring for older adults at home [9]. As a result, despite the negative perception of institutionalizing [5], the admission of older adults to nursing homes (NHs) has consistently risen, reaching 345,000 users of NHs in Korea in 2016 [6].…”

“…The common belief is that families' caregiving burdens would be diminished by admitting their relatives to NHs, however, families of older adult NH residents still experience different aspects of the caregiving burden [10], such as guilt, confusion with their caregiving role, and role conflicts with NH staff [9,11,12].…”

Caregiver burden and prevalence of depression, anxiety and sleep disturbances in Alzheimer's disease caregivers in China

“…Many studies assessing the quality of life of caregivers providing for those with dementia found that they experience high levels of grief, ambivalence and some psychological problems (Kwon & Tae , Skaalvik et al . ).…”

The Effect of Post-Stroke Depression on Rehabilitation Outcome and the Impact of Caregiver Type as a Factor of Post-Stroke Depression

“…Particularly among acute and subacute stroke patients, those with moderate to severe impairment have to depend on others to accomplish most of their activities of daily living and such roles are csarried out by their main caregivers [ 2 ]. Such care has usually been performed by the family, but care by professional caregivers is now being widely used in response to the structural change of Korean society resulting from the increasing life expectancy and elderly population [ 10 , 11 ]. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the type of caregiver (family or professional caregiver) and their effect in stroke patients' depression.…”