• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.958-969
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• 1998

In this study, we attempted to investigate the needs and problems of the terminal cancer patients and their family caregivers to provide them with nursing information to improve their quality of life and prepare for a peaceful death. Data was collected from August 1, 1995 to July 31, 1996 at the internal medicine unit of S hospital in Seoul area with the two groups of participants who were family members of terminal cancer patients seventy four of them were in-patients and 34 were out-patients who were discharged from the same hospital for home care. The research tool used in this study has been developed by selecting the questionnaires from various references, modifying them for our purpose and refining them based on the results of preliminary study. While general background information about the patients was obtained by reviewing their medical records, all other information was collected by interviewing the primary family caregivers of the patients using the questionnaire. The data collected were analyzed with the SPSS PC/sup +/ program. The results of this study are summarized as follows ; 1) Most frequently complained symptoms of the terminal cancer patients were in the order of pain(87%), weakness(86.1%), anorexia(83.3%) and fatigue (80.6%). 2) Main therapies for the terminal cancer patients were pain control (58.3%), hyperalimentation(47.2%) and antibiotics(21.3%). 3) Special medical devices that terminal cancer patients used most were oxygen device (11.1%), and feeding tube(5.6%). Other devices were used by less than 5% of the patients. 4) The mobility of 70.4% of the patients was worse than ECOG 3 level, they had to stay in bed more than 50% of a day. 5) Patients wanted their medical staffs to help relieve pain(45.4%), various physical symptoms(29.6%), and problems associated with their emotion(11.1%). 6) 16.7% of the family caregivers hoped for full recovery of the patients, refusing to admit the status of the patients. Also, 37% wished for the extension of the patient's life at least for 6 months. 7) Only 38.9% of the family members was preparing for the patient's funeral. 8) 45.4% of family caregivers prefer hospital as the place for the patient's death, 39.8% their own home, and 14.8% undetermined. 9) Caregivers of the patients were mostly close family members, i.e., spouse(62%), and sons and daughters or daughter-in-laws(21.3%). 10) 43.5% of the family caregivers were aware of hospice care. 46.8% of them learned about the hospice care from the mass media, 27.7% from health professionals, and the rest from books and other sources. 11) Caregivers were asked about the most difficult problems they encounter in home care, 41 of them pointed out the lack of health professionals they can contact, counsel and get help from in case of emergency, 17 identified the difficulty of finding appropriate transportation to hospital, and 13 stated the difficulty of admission in hospital as needed. 12) 93.6% of family caregivers demanded 24-hour hot line, 80% the visiting nurses and doctors, and 69.4% the volunteer's help. The above results indicate that terminal patients and their family caregivers demand help from qualified health professionals whenever necessary. Hospice care system led by well-trained medical and nursing staffs is one of the viable answers for such demands.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.467-486
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• 1993

Today, more chronically ill and handicapped people are being cared for at home by a family member caregiver. The task of caring for a family momber may mean that the caregiver has less time and money and more work which may result in increased fatigue and symptoms of illness. This study was done to examine the well-being of family caregivers. Fifty three family caregivers were interviewed. Concepts were measured using existing tools and included : Burden(25 item 5 point scale), Social sup-port (21 item 7 point scale), Health status defined by a symptom checklist(48 item S point scale), and Well -being defined by a quality of life scale (14 item 7 point scale) and caregiving activities. Data collection was done by interview and Q-sort. Social support and well - being were positively correlated as were symptoms and burden. Symptoms and burden were negatively correlated with social support and well-being. Items on the quality of life scale had a mean score range from 3.09 to 4.96. Quality of life related to income was lowest (3.09) but the desire to use more money for the patient was rated 2.90 on the burden scale where the item means ranged from 0.73 to 3.55. The high mean of 3.55 was for obligation to give care and the low 0.73 was (or not feeling that this was helping the patient. Mean scores for symptoms ranged from 0.26 to 2.15 with the 2.15 being for “worry about all the things that have to be done.” Over half of the patients were dependent for help with some activities of daily living. The caregivers reported doing an average of 3.40 out of five patient care activities including bathing (77.4%), shampooing (67.9%), and washing face and hands (49.1％), and 3.74 out of seven home maintenance activities including laundry (98.1％), cooking (83.0%), and arranging bed-ding(75.5%). The caregivers reported their spouse as one of the main sources of social support, including in times of loneliness and anger The mean score for loneliness as burden was 2.15 and ranked fourth and 31 (58.5％) of the sample reported being lonely recently and not being satisfied with the support received. Similarly anger caused by the patient was given a mean score of 2.13, and anger was reported to have been present recently by 38 (71.7%) of the sample and satis-faction with the support given was low. Having someone to help deal with anger ranked twelfth out of 21 items on the social support scale and had a mean score of 3.98 (range 3.49 to 5.98). Spouses were reported as a major source of social support but the fact that 50% of the caregivers were caring for a spouse, may account for the quality of this source of social support having been affected. These caregivers faced the same problems as others at the same stage of life. but because of the situation, there was a strain on their resources, particularly financial and social. In conclusion it was found that burden is correlated negatively to quality of life and positively to symptoms, but in this sample, symptoms and bur-den were scored relatively low. Does this indicate that the caregivers accept caregiving as part of their destiny and accept the quality of their lives with burden and symptoms just being a part of caregiving\ulcorner Does the correlation between the bur-den and symptoms indicate they are a measure of the same phenomenon or that the sample was of a more mobile, less burdened group of caregivers\ulcorner Quality of life was the one variable that was significant in explaining the varience on burden. Further study is needed to validate the conclusions found in this study but they indicate a need for nurses to ap-proach these caregivers with a plan tailored to each individual situation and to give consideration to interventions directed at improving quality of life and expanding social support networks for those caring for spouses.

• 한국보건간호학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.207-208
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• 2005

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.2453-2458
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• 2012

Background: The healthcare needs of cancer patients are complex and persons involved in their caregiving process are faced with many issues that need to be addressed. The entire family and particularly the person taking on responsibility for patient care develop expectations from healthcare professionals, especially nurses. Objective: The study was conducted to evaluate the impact of a home education program provided to caregivers of cancer patients on the level of their perceived social support and problems in caregiving. Interventions/Methods: The caregivers of thirty seven cancer patients of 2,400 registered people in a family center were given an educational program in this descriptive and cross-sectional study twice a week for a month during the period of March 2011 - April 2011. Results: Of all caregivers, 56.8% were between the ages 36-40, 94.5% were female, 91.9% had received no education on caregiving, 81.0% stated that they mostly felt physically and mentally inadequate in their caregiving. Perceived Social Support from the family indicated a significant difference at $8.05{\pm}4.38$ before and $11.7{\pm}4.97$ after the education. A comparison of the mean scores of caregivers on emotional issues before and after the education revealed the following: spiritual distress scores were $2.54{\pm}0.69$ before and $2.44{\pm}0.43$ after the education; hopelessness scores, $2.24{\pm}0.59$ before and $2.23{\pm}0.38$ after the education; ineffective individual coping was $3.89{\pm}1.42$ before and $2.45{\pm}0.59$ after the education; competing needs in decision-making were $3.54{\pm}0.69$ before and $2.10{\pm}1.24$ after the education; depressive feeling were $3.01{\pm}1.53$ before and $2.02{\pm}0.99$ after the education (p<0.05). Conclusions: Positive effects of home education on levels of perceived social support and caregiving problems of caregivers of cancer patients were observed. Home educational programs for caregivers of cancer patients are important for both better understanding of the requirements of their patients and themselves.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.649-660
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to identify the differences and relations among burden, coping behavior and ego-resilience on caregivers of stroke patients. Participants were 74 caregivers of stroke patients who were hospitalized in the department of Neurosurgery and Neurology. Data was collected from March, 30 to September, 30 of 2014. Result: Caregivers burden was 3.66, coping behavior and ego-resilience were 2.67 and 3.10. Caregivers burden had significant differences according to caregivers gender, age, relationship with the patient, education level, marital state, and subjectively perceived physical condition. Coping behavior had significant differences according to martial state and caregiving hours, ego-resilience had no variable which showed significant differences. There is little correlation among these three variables. In conclusion, the burden levels are high in caregivers. It requires measures for reducing the caregivers burden. Further replication studies to identify the relation among these three variables are needed as well.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Rural Health Nursing
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.40-48
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• 2006

Purpose: This study was done to identify the experience of stress and burn-out in caregivers of patients with senile dementia. Method: To evaluate the degree of stress and burn-out in caregivers of patients with senile dementia, 64 caregivers and matched to 64 patients with senile dementia at a Primary Health Care Post in South Kyung Sung Province were selected. The study was carried out from March 6 to March 30, 2001. Data on the degree of dementia in the patients was measured by the MMSE-K (Mini-Mental State Examination-Korea) and caregiver characteristics such as, sex, age, marital status, educational level, job, socioeconomic status, religion, number in family, relationship with patient, duration of care, and chronic disease in caregiver were collected by direct interview with a questionnaire. Results: Of 64 patients with senile dementia, 15.6% were classified as mild dementia (MMSE score 20-24) and 84.4%, as severe dementia. There were no significant characteristics of caregivers associated with the degree of stress and burn-out experience. The degree of burn-out in these caregivers of patients with severe dementia (mean value 94.3) was significantly higher than the 81.4 for those caring for patients with mild dementia (p<0.05). However, the degree of stress was not significantly related with the degree of dementia. The proportion experiencing severe burn-out (above score 4) was 54.7% in the physical domain, 90.6% in the emotional domain, and 73.4% in psychiatric domain, respectively. Conclusion: The above findings suggest that the degree of stress and burn-out experienced by caregivers of patients with senile dementia are high. Also the degree of burn-out experienced by in caregivers of patients with severe dementia was higher than for those caring for patients with mild dementia.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.188-201
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• 2016

The aim of this descriptive correlation research was to identify the factors influencing stress in caregivers of stroke patients in rehabilitation centers. The data were collected from 200 caregivers at three rehabilitation centers in B City from September 1 to 30, 2015. The data were also collected utilizing the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Caregiving Mastery Scale, the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) Scale, and Burden Interview (BI) Scale. The data were analyzed using the SPSS Win 18.0 program. The factor with the greatest impact on stress was social support, which accounted for 9.3% of stress, followed by the duration of giving care to the patient, religious status, economic conditions, caregiver's age, resilience, caregiver's health status, patient's conscious status, and patient's age, all of which accounted for 30% of the stress for caregivers. Therefore, it is essential to develop social support programs that can reduce the stress for caregivers of patients in rehabilitation centers and to develop stress intervention programs, taking all the factors affecting stress into consideration.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.291-304
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to identify factors influencing family caregivers' reaction of persons with cancer. The study participants were 130 cancer patients and their family caregivers. Data on participant characteristics, caregiver reaction, perceived social support, and cancer related health literacy were collected from July 17 to November 7, 2018 using a structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed with the SPSS/WIN 23.0 program for descriptive statistics, using independent t-test, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson's correlation coefficient and enter multiple regression analysis. The determining factors affecting caregivers' reaction were in case of spouse of patient(${\beta}=.252$, p=.002), subjective health status(${\beta}=-.207$ p=.012), and health literacy (self-care, patient's needs and preference) (${\beta}=-.411$, p<.001; ${\beta}=.247$, p=.037 respectively), and their explanation power was about 37.9%. This finding underscores the need for developing and application of the individualized education program with health literacy improvement strategies for family caregivers of cancer patients.

• Journal of Korean Academic Society of Home Health Care Nursing
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.292-305
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• 2017

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the factors influencing the entrapment of primary caregivers of cancer patients. Methods: From 6 general hospitals, 146 primary caregivers of cancer patients who were receiving home healthcare nursing service were selected for the study. Regarding data collection, structured questionnaires were distributed to the caregivers for data collection. T-test, ANOVA and hierarchical regression were used for data analysis. Results: The significantly influential factors on their entrapment were caregiving time, taking turms to look after the patient, disease duration, home healthcare nursing period, quality of relationship, perceived health status, and social support. And the explanatory power was 55.1% Conclusion: To reduce primary caregivers' entrapment, it is necessary to perform comprehensive and continuous nursing intervention, and to develop a standardized home healthcare nursing intervention program, and to come up with a system for using resources available in local communities.

• Journal of East-West Nursing Research
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.33-42
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• 2006

Purpose: This study was a descriptive study to compare of quality of life, relationship with CVA patients, and family support between caregiver of patient with CVA in western and oriental medicine. Method: Total 270 caregivers for CVA patients were selected from western medicine department (114) and oriental medicine department (156) at K hospital in Seoul. The instrument tools utilized in this study were quality of life, Family support, Caregiver's relationship with patients, daily activity. Collected data were analyzed by $X^2$-test, t-test using SPSS Windows 12.0 Program. Result: The result are as follows: 1) There was no significant difference in quality of life between caregivers of patients with CVA in western and oriental medicine(t=.26, p=.792). 2) There was significant difference in relationship with patients(t=2.64, p=.009) and family support(t=2.12, p=.035) before onset of disease between caregivers of patients with CVA in western and oriental medicine. Conclusion: As a result, caregivers of oriental medicine with CVA patients showed closer relationship with patients before the onset of disease and higher family support compare to caregivers of western medicine with CVA patients.