Family Nursing Conversations in Home Health Care: supporting family functioning and preventing caregiver burden in long-term care situations

In an ageing population, fewer health care professionals are available for the increasing number of people in need of care. Professional care, therefore, needs to be efficient and include family caregivers. Intensive and long-term family caregiving can result in caregiver burden and impaired family functioning. In her PhD thesis, Susanne Broekema shows that family nursing conversations in home health care can improve family functioning and prevent caregiver burden, without increasing the need for professional care.

Participants in a family nursing conversation are the nurse, the care recipient, and the family members or other close ones. Together, they explore the network and the situation. Each participant’s perspective is included in the conversation. The nurse structures the conversation, encourages open communication, and acknowledges painful experiences, emotions, and also the family’s strengths. The participants work towards a shared approach of the care situation.

The research showed that nurses were well able to conduct family nursing conversations, after participating in an educational intervention. In interviews, families explained that the conversation resulted in increased overview of the situation and improved quality of contact. In the longer term, family members mentioned decreased burden and a better match between the care and both their capacities and the needs of the care recipient.

A comparison between families that participated in two family nursing conversations and families that only received the usual home health care, again showed the positive influence of the conversations on family functioning and caregiver burden. In addition, these families required less professional home health care.