Author(s)

Quanwan Tao, Jun Zhang

School of Health Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.

Background: Caregiving for someone is a huge task for informal caregivers. The caregiving role is often challenging and overwhelming for them. Stress, burden, and depression have been frequently identified as the negative caregiving experiences. This systematic review synthesized the available evidence for the problem-based intervention provided for caregivers as there is little insight about the effects of problem-based intervention on caregivers. Objectives: To describe: 1) the design of problem-solving intervention; 2) the effects of problem-solving intervention for caregiver outcomes. Methods: This review followed Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework for conducting scoping reviews which entail setting research questions, selecting relevant studies, charting the data and synthesizing the results. FPRISMA guidelines were adopted and several databases were searched including MEDLINE; EMBASE; web of science. This review contains literature from 2012 to 2019 on problem-solving-based intervention which intended to caregivers. Results: 41 publications representing 27 unique problem-based interventions. Problem-solving-based intervention has different extent effects on caregiver emotion status, burden and quality of life. Conclusions: Problem-solving intervention is promising in caregiver intervention which could reduce caregiver depression, anxiety and burden.

Informal Caregiver, Problem-Solving, Scoping Review

Tao, Q. and Zhang, J. (2019) Problem-Solving Based Intervention for Informal Caregivers: A Scoping Review. Open Journal of Nursing, 9, 951-971. doi: 10.4236/ojn.2019.99071.