A Strengths Perspective on Caregiving at the End-of-life

Abstract

The adverse effects of caregiving provided by family members, partners, and friends for people dying at home from a life-limiting illness have been extensively documented in the palliative care research literature, yet minimal attention has been directed towards the strengths of informal carers and their subsequent growth and development. Using in-depth interviews from a purposive sample of informal carers (n = 28), this paper reports empirical evidence from a subset of data analysed for an Australian qualitative study, illuminating a range of strengths frequently obscured beneath the emotional-labour work of caregiving and further sequestrated by the chaos of grief. A strengths perspective on caregiving at end-of-life is important because it helps to inform a reconstruction of caring and dying to include dimensions that relate to the growth of human potential and capacity, as well as enabling collaborative partnerships between workers and informal carers at the end-of-life.

家属、伴侣、友朋为因致命性疾病而病逝在家者提供关照，其副作用被保守治疗的研究屡屡谈及。人们极少留心非正式看护的长处，以及它后来的发展。本本报告了一项澳大利亚定性研究的资料数据，包括对立意样本的28位非正式看护所做的深度访谈，证明非正式看护种种易被紧情感劳动掩盖、被伤心悲痛收缴的长处。从长处方面看临终阶段的看护工作非常重要，因为它所复原的看护和死亡过程包含了人类潜能增长的一面，还能使临终阶段的社工与非正式看护建立起合作伙伴关系。

Keywords:

• Palliative Care
• Grief and Loss
• Bereavement
• Strengths-based Approaches
• Heuristic Enquiry