Identifying the support needs of the informal caregivers of long-term care residents: The potential benefits of a mobile application

Abstract

Informal caregivers of older adults who reside in long-term care facilities play a crucial role in ensuring the needs of the resident are being met. Such institutional informal caregivers (IICs), however, are at a greater risk of experiencing subjective burden and loneliness. They also tend to report lower levels of perceived social support than their non-caregiver counterparts. Despite web-based messaging services as well as virtual and in-person informal caregiver support groups showing promise in reducing subjective burden and loneliness, barriers such as a lack of transportation or required web services, caregiver busyness, and competing responsibilities of the caregiver often prevent caregivers from engaging in such groups. In order to make social support more accessible, mobile applications (apps) have been developed, but often focus on training the informal caregiver to provide care rather than providing the informal caregiver with support for managing their own stressors. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the support needs of informal caregivers in addition to the potential benefits of a mobile app intended to provide them with support to improve their experiences of subjective burden, loneliness, and perceived social support. One hundred and twenty-four of participants (72.6% female, 25.8% male, 0.8% intersex) completed online self-report measures of subjective burden, loneliness, perceived social support with participants' inclinations to use a hypothetical IIC support app. One-way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) and independent samples t-tests were conducted to explore the effect of demographic characteristics on psychosocial variables and technology acceptance and readiness. Multiple linear regression analysis demonstrated that perceived social support from significant others was a significant predictor of technology acceptance. One-way ANOVAs and independent samples t-test determined that institutional informal caregivers (IICs), experienced moderate to high subjective burden, particularly among older, male, substitute decision-makers (SDMs), and those with other dependents. Older, retired, or female IICs experienced higher levels of loneliness, while SDMs and those with additional dependents were less lonely. Older IICs reported greater levels of perceived social support from friends and married IICs reported greater levels of perceived social support overall. IICs who identified as female tended to be more accepting of technology. Qualitative analysis found that IICs tend to experience their caregiving role as being all-consuming, impacting nearly every aspect of their life and that IICs would likely consider performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions when deciding to engage with a new mobile app. Unique contributions of this study consist of the focus on IICs and the examination of psychosocial outcomes and technology acceptance. Further research into the coping mechanisms utilized by IICs as well as the impacts of role strain onto psychosocial outcomes such as subjective burden, loneliness, and perceived social support may be warranted to inform the creation of interventions geared towards providing psychosocial support to IICs. Overall, these results suggest that IICs’ experiences of subjective burden and loneliness differ from that of the home-based informal caregiving population and that IICs may benefit from a mobile application to provide psychosocial support.