Introduction
fracture, grown-up, cognitive impairment, traumatic
EVENT
Hip fracture is a devastating injury, predominantly seen in frail older people and disproportionally more women.Given the sudden, traumatic nature of hip fracture, people often rely on family members or friends for informal care following hospital discharge. Additionally, approximately 40% of people who sustain a hip fracture have cognitive impairment, meaning many caregivers also have to cope with the challenges of functional dependency and neurocognitive symptoms.Informal caregivers are a heterogeneous population. For some, this may be the first time with caregiving responsibilities; for others, it is perceived as an episodic event with a temporary increase in care needs. They may be a retired spouse, friend, grown-up children in employment; living with, close by or far away; and of course, they are facing their own physical and mental health challenges. Caregiving may further be exacerbated by (but not limited to) the ageing population, smaller average family size, changing gender-roles due in part to more women working outside the home.The ability of a person to cope with the roles and responsibility of caregiving is a complex interaction of different factors. In addition to stressors related to the actual caregiving, there are other factors that may determine a person’s ability to manage the caregiving role, such as caregiver resources, social environment (eg, informal and professional support), relationship quality with the care recipient and caregiver, positive aspects of caregiving (eg, finding meaning in the caregiving role).Our qualitative study investigated the informal caregiver perspectives of caring for a person with hip fracture following hospital discharge, nested within a larger study aimed at assessing the feasibility of a pragmatic, multicentre randomised controlled trial (RCT) of an informal caregiver training programme (HIP HELPER) to support the recovery of people following hip fracture surgery.