Examining Heart Failure Informal Care Partners Using Person and System Levels and Domains: A Meta-Synthesis

Within the last decade, system and policy-level changes have driven substantial shifts in heart failure (HF) care from hospital to home, requiring greater support from informal care partners. What has not been examined is the state of the care partner science by person and system-level domains using qualitative studies to understand impact across multiple person and system levels.

(1) Identify by person and system levels and domain what is known about informal care partners and (2) Identify gaps in the caregiving science and suggest ways to move forward.

This secondary analysis of a large HF systematic review is guided by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and MIRACLE frameworks and uses meta-synthesis techniques with critical realist approaches to synthesize and interpret the themes across papers.

Using data from 46 papers and 1695 care partners, we identified patterns occurring across 6 domains (biological, behavioral, affective, physical/built environment, sociocultural environment, and healthcare system) and on 4 levels (individual, interpersonal, community, and societal). Existing research predominantly addressed affective and behavioral domains, followed by health system and sociocultural domains. Few studies focused on biological and physical/built environment domains, leaving large gaps in what is known about caregiving at the cellular (biological) and societal (community and societal) levels.

HF caregiving continues to be studied at a very rudimentary level. This synthesis also reveals critical gaps in what is known about caregiving within the physical/built environment domain and at the community and societal levels.