Spotlight on Research

Hot off the press: two Irish-led Cochrane systematic reviews.

Massive congratulations to Irish authors Dr Charlene Treanor and Dr Margarita Corry who each led on Cochrane Systematic Reviews which were recently published with the Cochrane Consumers and Communication Group. Well done to all involved.

Dr Treanor is based with the Centre for Public Health in Queen’s University Belfast, and published a review entitled 'Psychosocial interventions for informal caregivers of people living with cancer'. The review found that psychosocial interventions do not impact to a clinically meaningful degree on quality of life (with the exception of a minimal benefit immediately post-intervention), psychological and physical health outcomes for caregivers. Other outcomes not captured by this review, such as relationship quality, may be more helpful for caregivers. Read the full review here

Dr Margarita Corry is based in Trinity College Dublin within the School of Nursing & Midwifery. Dr Corry's review is about 'Telephone interventions, delivered by healthcare professionals, for providing education and psychosocial support for informal caregivers of adults with diagnosed illnesses', and found that small benefits may exist for telephone support interventions over usual care on some caregiver outcomes (e.g. anxiety and preparedness to care at the end of intervention), but not on quality of life or burden. Few included studies had overall low risk of bias indicating a need for high quality trials of caregiver telephone support interventions that adhere to the Criteria for Reporting the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions in healthcare (CReDECI) guidelines. Read the full review here