Informal Caregivers: From Hidden Heroes to Integral Part of Care

This book builds on the current trends in informal caregivers' role in the supportive care of cancer patients (as well as other diseases) across the care continuum covering topics from the healthcare professionals and the users' perspectives. Informal caregivers are a critical resource to their care recipients and an essential component of the health care system. The book introduces a comprehensive view of the topic and acknowledges the importance and the complexity of caregiving. Here lays one of the uniqueness of this book, which highlights the areas and the ways that for example interventions in specific settings/groups of patients can actually facilitate the caregiving process. 

The increasing number of care-dependent people, the adoption of the principle 'outpatient before inpatient', the shift of care from inpatient to outpatient and the preference for home care (i.e. majority) are only some of the reasons that contributed to Informal caregiving becoming a central feature of the health care landscape and will become even more prominent in the decades ahead. 

The book draws on the experts' high-end, current systematic research evidence and real-life examples on these topics to provide an insightful perspective on undertaking research within this context, and to demonstrate informal caregivers' impact on patients' outcomes. The structure of the book provides multiple perspectives to the topic and makes it appealing to a wide range of recipients including the nursing community, clinicians, social workers, researchers, policy makers, technology experts as well as postgraduate students especially to those practicing specifically in supportive care in cancer. 

The book fills a gap in this field of expertise not only by familiarizing the reader with a wide range of topics to be considered but it also emphasizes on what the developments in the field in the future would need to take into consideration. Finally, current and future studies can be informed from the practices of preceding studies that are incorporated in the book. 

Andreas Charalambous, BSc, MSc, PGCert (Research), PhD (Oncology Nursing), started his nursing career in 1995. He obtained his BSc in Nursing Science in 1999 by the Northumbria University (U.K), his MSc (Nursing Science) in 2002 and his PhD (Oncology Nursing) in 2008 from Middlesex University (UK). He has a proven track in academia since 2004. ?e is the VICE-Chair of the Nursing Department at the Cyprus University of Technology where he works as an Associate Professor of Oncology and Palliative Care and he also holds the position of an Adjunct Professor at University of Turku (Finland). He is the founder and Past-President of the Cyprus Oncology Nursing Society, European Oncology Nursing Society (EONS) Past-President and European Cancer Organization PRESIDENT. He is also the Founder of the Cancer Nursing Fund. He is involved in National and International research programs (HORIZON2020, ERASMUS+, COST) in various fields of cancer care. Examples of externally funded projects include: PI in the ERASMUS+ project PROLEPSIS and PI (Cyprus team) in the ERAMUS+ project HERO, PI (Cyprus team) in the HORIZON project INCISIVE.
He has published over 150 National and International publications in esteem journals. H-index 29 and i10-index 56.