The impact on employees of providing informal caregiving for someone with dementia

Abstract

Objective

To determine if employees who are concurrently providing informal caregiving for a person with dementia (DCG) experience greater challenges than employees providing informal caregiving to older adults without dementia (ND CG).

Method

From a sample of employee respondents to a national Canadian survey three groups were studied: ND CG, and two subgroups of DCGs defined by the level of demand posed by the care recipient (CR) – low dementia demand (LDD) and moderate/high dementia demand (HDD). The dependent variables were CGs’ job profile, health/well-being, nature of caregiving and work-caregiving balance and CRs’ health demands. We used general linear models for analysis.

Results

1839 employee respondents were informal caregivers for an older adult, of whom 666 were DCGs. HDD CGs (n = 363) had significantly greater role demands and challenges on measures of perceived stress, depressed mood, burden, self-efficacy, mastery, control, absenteeism, job-caregiving conflict and role overload than LDD (n = 303) and ND CGs (n = 1173). LDD and ND CGs did not differ on these measures.

Conclusion

Employees concurrently caring informally for persons with dementia who pose moderate to high care demands experience significantly more difficulties than employees providing LDD or ND informal care for an older adult. These results may guide employers and clinicians in identifying and responding to CG employees who need enhanced support both in the workplace and the community to maintain their work productivity.

Keywords:

• Dementia
• employee
• working caregiver
• informal caregivers
• stress
• burden
• absenteeism
• job–caregiving conflict
• role overload

Author contribution

JS was the Principal Investigator, conceived the study, co-wrote and was joint author of the manuscript; SS performed the statistical analysis, co-wrote and was joint author of the manuscript. LD was the site Principal Investigator, was principal author of the survey, co-led study design, implemented the survey and provided feedback on the manuscript; MC co-ordinated the study, contributed to study design, co-created the survey questions and gave feedback on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Number of missed medical appointments in the 6 months prior to study because CG was too busy to find time for their own medical care.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) under the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Dementia Research Strategy.