Is pre-bereavement collaboration between family caregivers and healthcare professionals associated with post-bereavement emotional well-being?

OBJECTIVE: To investigate pre-bereavement collaboration with healthcare professionals and its association with emotional well-being of family caregivers of people with serious illness post-bereavement.

METHODS: Population-based cross-sectional survey of bereaved family caregivers of people with serious illness (N = 3000) who died two to six months before the sample was drawn (November 2019), identified through three sickness funds in Belgium.

RESULTS: Response rate was 55%. As measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), family caregivers scored lower on positive affect (PA) and higher on negative affect (NA) compared to a normative sample. Most family caregivers evaluated the pre-bereavement collaboration with healthcare professionals positively. Family caregivers' evaluation of collaboration with healthcare professionals pre-bereavement was positively associated with PA and negatively with NA, also when controlling for confounding effects of socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of the bereaved family caregiver and the deceased person.

CONCLUSION: There is a positive association between perceived quality of collaboration at the end of life between healthcare professionals and family caregivers and post-bereavement emotional well-being of family caregivers.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Our findings suggest the pertinence of attention from healthcare professionals to effective collaboration with family caregivers.