ArticlePalliative & supportive care2025
What can we learn from the accounts of lay carers administering end of life medications to a loved one at home? Exploring benefits, challenges and ways to empower patients and carers in the future.
Article in Palliative & supportive care, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Empowering lay carers to administer end-of-life medications: A crucial step in supporting home deaths.Palliative & supportive care · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesMost people at the end of life wish to die at home. Lay carers are crucial to supporting a home death and key to a good death is management of symptoms; this may prevent unwanted hospital admissions. If a dying person is too weak to swallow, regular medicines are administered continuously via subcutaneous (SC) cannula. When symptoms "break through," additional (or as-needed) doses can be given, usually by a visiting healthcare professional. Delayed symptom control can occur due to time taken for healthcare professionals to arrive at the home.Lay carers can be trained to administer as-needed SC medicines; the practice is safe and legal in the UK, although not widely used. The "CARer-Administration of as-needed SC medication for breakthrough symptoms in people dying at home" (CARiAD) feasibility trial of lay carer administration in the UK was the first to conduct in-depth interviews with carers trained in the practice.The objective of this paper is to give voice to carers and show how experiences reflect benefits and challenges of lay administration at the end of life.
methodsQualitative interviews with carers trained in the practice. Interviews were analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis.
resultsCaring for a loved one at home during the last days of life is complex. Accounts reveal a desire to fulfill a loved one's wishes by keeping them at home and having the death they wanted. Carers were afraid of uncontrolled symptoms, especially pain, empowered by the ability to help and grateful to avoid long delays. Potential for carer burden and fears of hastening death require careful reassurance from health care professionals. SIGNIFICANCE OF
resultsWe learned that carers endorsed and embraced the opportunity to do more to keep their loved ones comfortable and at home. This is significant in making the case for wider access to the practice in the UK.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.