Family Caregiver Burden in PreOperative and PostOperative Oral

Family Caregiver Burden in Pre-Operative and Post-Operative Oral and Laryngeal Cancer Patients n n 英文摘要 Family caregivers provide an important part of the care needed in post- operative oral cancer and laryngeal cancer patients. However, there are heavy burdens associated with providing care to cancer patient. The longitudinal study was designed to understand the family caregiver care burden and related factors in pre-operative and post-operative oral and laryngeal cancer patients of one teaching hospital in Northern Taipei. 58 dyads of patients and families participated in the study. The data includes of patient’s and family’s demographics, diseaserelated information, patient’s symptom severity (measured with Symptom Severity Scale), care pattern, social support (measured with Medical Outcome study Social Support), and the caregiver’s burden (measured with the Caregiver Reaction Assessment). The methods of analysis included descriptive statistics, Pair-t-test and Generalized Estimating Equation model. (1). The results revealed that the primary caregiver experienced higher burden after patient received surgery. (2). The severity of care burden on the primary caregiver was in the order: disrupted schedual, health problems, financial problems, and lack of family support. (3). The main predictors of disrupted schedual were the caregiver’s age, caregiver’s employment, caregiver’s health status, time arrangement, type of care, caregiver’s social support, patient’s pre-operative treatment option, and patient’s symptom severity. (4). The main predictors of caregiver’s health problems were caregiver’s employment, caregiver’s health status, time arrangement, caregiver’s social support, patient’s disease diagnosis, and patient’s pre-operative treatment option. (5). The main predictors of financial problems included caregiver’s employment, time arrangement, patient’s age, and patient’s pre-operative treatment option. (6). The main predictors of lack of family support included caregiver’s health status, caregiver’s time arrangement, type of care, and patient’s disease stage. The most related factor affecting the caregiver burden were caregiver’s time arrangement, type of care, caregiver’s health status, caregiver’s employment, caregiver’s social support, and patient’s symptom severity. These related factors can be served as important reference for clinical healthy care provider to pay more attention about the caregiver burden issue. The recommendation is that clinical healthy care provider can offer mental support, transition care type information, and supplied the assistance to reduce the caregiver burden to help the caregiver keep continue to provide better care services of oral cancer and laryngeal cancer patients.