Caregivers’ Stress and Coping with Stress from Caring for Terminally Ill Patients in a Palliative Care Unit
Keywords:
caregivers of terminally ill patients, palliative care unit, stress, stress copingAbstract
Abstract:
Objectives: To study caregivers’ levels of stress and their means of coping with stress from caring for terminally ill patients admitted to a palliative care unit.
Design: Descriptive research.
Methodology: Seventy-three family caregivers of terminally ill patients admitted to a palliative care unit of a tertiary hospital in Thailand were recruited through purposive sampling from July to November 2018. The research instruments were: 1) a demographic questionnaire; 2) a stress-measuring scale for caregivers of terminally ill patients; and 3) the Jalowiec Coping Scale (JCS). Data were collected by the researcher and analysed using descriptive statistics, including mean, percentage, and standard deviation.
Results: The family caregivers displayed a moderate average level of stress. A categoryspecifc analysis identifed the physical conditions of the terminal ill patients as the most influential cause of the caregivers’ stress, followed by the caregivers’ psychological, economic, social, and environmental conditions, respectively. To cope with stress, the caregivers used both problem focus coping and emotional focus coping. with greater emphasis on the latter.
Recommendations: The study fndings could be used as baseline data for nursing care planning to assess family caregivers’ stress and to promote their use of appropriate problem focus coping and emotional focus coping.
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