Abstract

CRUZ, Dídia Carolina Miranda; LOUREIRO, Hugo André de Moura; SILVA, Margarida Alexandra Nunes Carramanho Gomes Martins Moreira da  and  FERNANDES, Mariana Mouronho. The experiences of informal caregivers of dependent elderly. Rev. Enf. Ref. [online]. 2010, vol.serIII, n.2, pp.127-136. ISSN 0874-0283.

In an increasingly aging society, where there is a significant increase in health needs of the elderly is emerging, as attention focus, the informal care to dependent elderly person whose responsibility belongs primarily to the family. Caring for the caregiver is a responsibility and should be a concern of all health professionals, especially the nurses, being that their intervention should be focused on the dynamic equilibrium of caregiver / elderly. This balance is easily disturbed by the informal care to elderly dependent, and due to this motive we drafted the present article that aims to describe the experiences felt by informal caregivers, that were found in the scientific literature available. The survey was conducted in the following databases: CINAHL, MedicLatina, MEDLINE, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection; the Open Access Repository Scientific Portugal; The Cochrane Library, DynaMed, SciELO and Google Scholar, leading to a sample of 17 studies primary and a systematic literature review. The main results point out the existence of some axes, around which the experiences of informal caregivers of dependent elderly are built, namely: the reasons for accepting the role; the difficulties; coping strategies; factors related to the burden and sources of satisfaction triggered by the act of caring.

Keywords : informal caregiver; elderly dependent; life experiences.

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