Coping with Challenges of the Supporting Roles in Diseases with a Poor Prognosis
A special issue of Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032). This special issue belongs to the section "Family Medicine".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 July 2026
Special Issue Editor
Interests: health promotion; oncology; surgery; methodology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Supporting patients in hospitals, institutions and at home urges us to consider those who provide care, termed caregivers. These roles include both health professionals, such as physicians and nurses, and untrained caregivers, such as family members, friends and social network members. In diseases with a poor prognosis, it is likely that the caregivers’ resources or capacities will be exceeded, with this resulting in distress and psychological, well-being-related and financial consequences. The current literature suggests that interventions for caregivers should reflect various caregiving experiences and that these caregiving experiences are compared.
Therefore, we are pleased to invite you to contribute articles concerning the professional or informal care of patients with chronic illnesses or diseases and a poor prognosis.
This Special Issue aims to focus on unique and differing caregiver needs in various contexts in order to provide an evidence base that informs guidance concerning caring for caregivers.
This Special Issue welcomes the submission of original research and literature reviews that explore the provision of care and support in clinical settings, chronic diseases, oncology, cardiological and neurological settings, and palliative care.
The scope of this Special Issue includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:
- Observational and longitudinal studies focusing on the role of caregivers;
- Interventional studies involving the role of caregivers;
- Systematic review and meta-analyses regarding the caregiver’s needs;
- Comparative studies exploring different types of caregiver’s communication/attitude/support;
- Studies measuring or validating tools for caregiving assessment;
- Qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods studies concerning the topic.
I look forward to receiving your contributions.
Eleonora Pinto
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- health promotion
- caregiver
- health-professionals
- family
- burden
- outcome measures
- assessment
- quality of life
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