Reconciling employment with caring for a husband with an advanced illness
Open Access
- 25 November 2009
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in BMC Health Services Research
- Vol. 9 (1), 1-9
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-9-216
Abstract
Little is known about combining work with caring for a person with advanced illness. This is important given the increasing number of women in the workforce and current policy seeking to increase care in the community. The aim of this paper was to explore the meaning of work for women caring for a husband with an advanced illness and the consequences of combining these two roles. A purposive sample of 15 carers was recruited from a hospital and from the community, via the patients they cared for. Their illnesses included chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancer, motor neurone disease, and heart failure. Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews that were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A Grounded Theory approach was used and case studies were developed. NVivo software facilitated the management and analysis of the data. Caring presented challenges to carers' work life. It diminished productivity or the quality of work, and led to missed opportunities for promotion. Work had an effect on the quality of care and the relationship with the patient, which eventually led to work being given up for caring. Three carers resisted the pressures to give up work and used it as a coping strategy. A positive choice to remain in employment does not necessarily signal reluctance to care. Caring arrangements need to be understood from the common and separate interests of carers and the people they support.This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- Reluctance to CareCancer Nursing, 2007
- Choice in the context of informal care-givingHealth & Social Care in the Community, 2006
- Factors influencing death at home in terminally ill patients with cancer: systematic reviewBMJ, 2006
- Carer Break or Carer‐blind? Policies for Informal Carers in the UKSocial Policy & Administration, 2001
- The Art of Case Study ResearchThe Modern Language Journal, 1996
- A Population-Based Assessment of the Impact and Burden of Caregiving for Long-term Stroke SurvivorsStroke, 1995
- Caregiving and Employment: Competing or Complementary Roles?The Gerontologist, 1994
- A cancer experience: Relationship of patient psychosocial responses to care‐giver burden over timePsycho‐Oncology, 1993
- Employment and `Community Care': Policies for the 1990sWork, Employment & Society, 1992
- Chronic illness as biographical disruptionSociology of Health & Illness, 1982