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Consequently, the demand for informal caregivers has significantly increased during the past few years. Caring for a dependent person is linked to a series of burdens that often leads to physical, psychological and emotional difficulties. Taking into consideration the difficulties faced by informal caregivers, knowing in which areas of functioning they need more guidance may help to relieve their burden. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to better understand the needs and competencies of the informal caregiver when caring for a dependent person in the different self-care domains.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>This cross-sectional study used a questionnaire administered on a single occasion by face-to-face interview. Descriptive and inferential statistics alongside non-parametric statistical techniques such as the Mann-Whitney test and Spearman\u2019s correlation were used.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The average age of the 143 informal caregivers is 58\u2009years old, with the youngest in our sample being 21\u2009years of age. Most of them are female, and 50% of them are children taking care of one of their parents. Most of the dependent people are completely dependent in the areas of comfort and hygiene (53.8%) and medication management (55.9%). The female informal caregivers see themselves as having more competencies in sanitary hygiene than the male ones, with no significant differences in their competencies\u2019 perception in the other areas of self-care. Older caregivers see themselves as less competent in certain areas of self-care such as feeding, mobility, transfers, medication and symptoms management and communication. Most of the information given to the informal caregiver is about the disease (82.3%) and the medication management (80.4%). There are still a lot of areas of self-care, where no information, or almost none, is given to the informal caregivers.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Before home discharge of a dependent person, it is important to acknowledge the needs and competencies of the informal caregiver, to capacitate them in looking after their relatives, to help decrease their burden and consequently, decrease the number of hospital readmissions.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12877-019-1274-0","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,18]],"date-time":"2019-09-18T06:03:22Z","timestamp":1568786602000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":64,"title":["Needs and skills of informal caregivers to care for a dependent person: a cross-sectional study"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"19","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9035-8548","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Maria dos Anjos Coelho Rodrigues","family":"Dixe","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Liliana Fernanda","family":"da Concei\u00e7\u00e3o Teixeira","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Tim\u00f3teo Jo\u00e3o Teixeira Camacho Coelh","family":"Areosa","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Roberta Ca\u00e7ador","family":"Frontini","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Teresa","family":"de Jesus Almeida Peralta","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Ana Isabel Fernandes","family":"Querido","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,18]]},"reference":[{"key":"1274_CR1","unstructured":"United Nations. 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