The experiences of men caregivers: A constructivist grounded theory study

Objective: Care is an important reality of social life. Informal caregivers, which constitute an important component of care service, are at the center of attention of the literature. However, mostly the experiences of women were examined. This situation both makes it difficult to understand informal caregivers holistically and provides restrictive information to the social policies planned to be made in the future. In addition men who provide informal care in the Turkish sample are studied very little, this study is aimed to understand the experiences of informal male caregivers in this study. Method: In this study, firstly, qualitative design was chosen in order to understand the experiences of informal caregivers in depth. Since there is no accepted theory about care of older adults, the constructivist grounded theory, which is one of the subtypes of qualitative design, was specifically used. In this context, data were collected with semi structured questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed according to the initial, axial and focused coding stages, respectively. Results: hree coding stages were carried out sequentially. As a result of initial coding, 53 codes were found after axial coding 23 categories were found. At last focused coding was resulted with five core categories which are Personalization of the Care Process, Resources, Practices, Needs and Reengineering. It is seen that they emerge in the caregiving process as a cumulative rather than a direct cause and effect relationship between the themes. Conclusion: It has been demonstrated that theoretically, a single approach is not sufficient to understand and explain the experiences of caregiver men. The existing perspectives in the studies should be used eclectically. In practice, specialized and accessible formal services should be created for men in all social positions. Services should include care support for the caregiver, information about the process, and psychological/physical/economic services. Key words: care of older adults, men caregivers, informal care, constructivist grounded theory