Background: Children and adolescents who provide care, assistance or support for a chronically ill family member are called young carers. While there is a growing body of research about their specific situation, needs and impact of caring, only very few studies provide information on prevalence rates.Objectives: The aim was to provide prevalence data for young carers in Germany, and to describe and quantify the nature and extent of their help.Design: A cross‐sectional study.Settings: Data collection took place between 2016 and 2017 in 44 secondary schools (fifth to 13th grade) in North Rhine‐Westphalia, Germany.Participants: A total of 6313 students aged from 10 to 22 years participated in this study. They represent 0.5% of the basic population.Methods: Based on the results of a preliminary qualitative study, a standardised electronic questionnaire was developed, which comprised four subject areas: socio‐demographic information, general daily aids, health‐related quality of life and chronic illness within the family. Statistical analyses included chi‐square tests for nominal data and univariate analyses of variance for metrical data together with 95% confidence intervals.Results: 19.6% (n = 1238) of all respondents state that someone in their family needs help due to a chronic illness. Nevertheless, not all of them are involved in caring activities. The prevalence of those defined as young carers in this study is 6.1% (n = 383), 64% are girls. They take on a wide range of activities. In addition to domestic work, they help their ill relatives with mobility, dressing and undressing, medication, feeding, personal hygiene and with intimate care.Conclusions: The data provide a good insight into the situation of young carers. The prevalence rate is higher than expected. It refers to the social relevance of this topic and the need for further investigations.

Many countries throughout the world are facing a serious nursing shortage, and retention of nurses also is a challenge. The aim of this study was to compare the predictive contribution of a broad spectrum of psychosocial work factors, including job strain, effort-reward imbalance, and alternative employment opportunity, to the probability of intention to leave the nursing profession. A total of 7,990 registered female nurses working in hospitals in eight countries (Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Slovakia, and China) were included in the one-year prospective study. A standardized questionnaire on job strain, effort-reward imbalance, employment opportunity, and intention to leave the nursing profession was used in the survey. Multilevel logistic regression modeling was used to analyze the data. Results showed that an imbalance between high effort and low reward (in particular, poor promotion prospects) and good employment opportunity at baseline were independently associated with a new intention to leave the nursing profession at follow-up. However, job strain appeared to have relatively less explanatory power. Findings suggest that interventions to improve the psychosocial work environment, especially the reciprocity experienced between effort and reward, may be effective in improving retention of nurses and tackling the international nursing shortage.

Previous cross-sectional findings from the European Nurses Early Exit Study (NEXT) show that nurses who were dissatisfied with their work schedule tended to consider leaving the nursing profession. Mediating factors in this decision process may be caused by self-perceived poor work ability and/or health. The aim of this paper is to investigate changes in work ability and general health among nurses in relation to requested, forced and denied change of shift schedule.

Lay family caregivers of patients receiving palliative care often confront stressful situations in the care of their loved ones. This is particularly true for families in the home-based palliative care settings, where the family caregivers are responsible for a substantial amount of the patient’s care. Yet, to our knowledge, no study to date has examined the family caregivers’ exposure to critical events and distress with home-based palliative care has been reported from Germany. Therefore, we attempt to assess family caregiver exposure to the dying patient’s critical health events and relate that to the caregiver’s own psychological distress to examine associations with general health within a home-based palliative care situation in Germany. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 106 family caregivers with home-based palliative care in the Federal State of North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. We administered the Stressful Caregiving Adult Reactions to Experiences of Dying (SCARED) Scale. Descriptive statistics and linear regression models relating general health (SF-36) were used to analyze the data. The frequency of the caregiver’s exposure, or witness of, critical health events of the patient ranged from 95.2% “pain/discomfort” to 20.8% “family caregiver thought patient was dead”. The highest distress scores assessing fear and helpfulness were associated with “family caregiver felt patient had enough’” and “family caregiver thought patient was dead”. Linear regression analyses revealed significant inverse associations between SCARED critical health event exposure frequency (beta = .408, p = .025) and total score (beta = .377, p = .007) with general health in family caregivers. Family caregivers with home-based palliative care in Germany frequently experience exposure to a large number of critical health events in caring for their family members who are terminally ill. These exposures are associated with the family caregiver’s degree of fear and helplessness and are associated with their worse general health. Thus the SCARED Scale, which is brief and easy to administer, appears able to identify these potentially upsetting critical health events among family caregivers of palliative care patients receiving care at home. Because it identified commonly encountered critical events in these patients and related them to adverse general health of family caregivers, the SCARED may add to clinically useful screens to identify family caregivers who may be struggling.

Der zunehmende Bedarf an qualifiziertem Pflegepersonal rückt das gesunde Altern in dieser Profession in den Blickpunkt wissenschaftlicher Betrachtung. Das Ziel dieser Untersuchung bestand a) in einer altersdifferenzierten, längsschnittlichen Betrachtung des allgemeinen Gesundheitszustands und b) in einer altersdifferenzierten Identifikation von Variablen, die den Gesundheitszustand der Pflegekräfte nach 12 Monaten prognostizieren. Die Identifikation geeigneter Prädiktoren sollte Hinweise geben, in welchen Bereichen Interventionen ansetzen könnten. Die Untersuchung stützte sich auf Daten der NEXT-Untersuchung. Die Analyse des allgemeinen Gesundheitszustands mittels ANOVA ergab, dass ältere Personen einen schlechteren Gesundheitszustand aufwiesen als jüngere und dass dieser bei älteren Pflegekräften nach einem Jahr stärker abnahm. Die Identifikation der Gesundheitsprädiktoren wurde mittels linearer Regressionen durchgeführt. Es zeigte sich, dass vor allem der Arbeit-Familien-Konflikt in jeder Altersgruppe ein bedeutsamer Prädiktor war. Während bei jüngeren Pflegenden die Führungsqualität zudem einen wichtigen Faktor darstellte, prognostizierten bei mittelalten Personen die quantitativen Anforderungen und die Beziehung zu den Kollegen das gesundheitliche Befinden. Für ältere Pflegekräfte stellte eine gute Beziehung zu den Vorgesetzten eine wichtige Komponente dar. Die unterschiedlichen Ergebnisse deuten an, dass Interventionsmaßnahmen, die das Ziel haben, den allgemeinen Gesundheitszustand möglichst lange hochzuhalten, altersdifferenziert implementiert werden sollten