Clinics Assist With Targeted Caregiver Support
The Caregiver Care Model , designed to provide supportive consultations for family caregivers on pertinent issues, was feasible in primary care and well received by general practitioners (GPs) and nurses.
METHODOLOGY:
The Caregiver Care Model was developed in 2022 and is used in primary care visits to help caregivers cope with grief while caring for a loved one with severe illness.
To see if the model would work in everyday practice, researchers tested how it was used in five clinics across Denmark, involving 40 caregivers (median age, 62 years; 82% women).
The caregivers were asked to complete a mandatory dialog questionnaire on their need for support related to patient's illness, their own support needs, and their past conditions such as a history of mental illness; clinicians used their answers to discuss needs during consultations.
Follow-up consultations were provided in cases of more severe distress; caregivers were provided a list of local community initiatives for specialized services.
TAKEAWAY:
Among the 40 caregivers, 72% had more than one consultation, with an average of three consultations reported.
Overall, 75% of caregivers completed the mandatory dialog questionnaire before the consultation, which healthcare providers said was useful in 74% of encounters.
Staff members such as nurses conducted 58% of first consultations and 67% of follow-up consultations, whereas the remaining consultations were conducted by GPs.
GPs and staff members found the dialog questionnaire helpful in guiding the first consultations toward the most relevant issues. The facilitating questions were rarely used but were found useful while the community-based initiatives were found useful in urban areas.
IN PRACTICE:
'The Caregiver Care Model offers acceptable and feasible tools to support caregivers in general practice, to facilitate a standardized way of identifying needs in caregivers, and to provide targeted caregiver support,' the authors wrote.
SOURCE:
This study was led by Mette Kjaergaard Nielsen of the Research Unit for General Practice, Aarhus, Denmark. It was published online on May 1, 2025, in BMC Primary Care .
LIMITATIONS:
All participating practices were interested in caregiver interventions and aimed to make a positive impact, but this enthusiasm may have led to an overestimation of the positive attitude and acceptability of the intervention. The Danish healthcare system's unique characteristics may also limit the generalizability of results to other countries.
DISCLOSURES:
This study was funded by the Danish Cancer Society and the Committee for Quality Improvement and Continuing Medical Education of general practice in the Central Denmark Region. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
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