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Neuere Arbeiten zur palliativen Versorgung schwerstkranker Kinder betonen, wie bedeutend die Berücksicbtigung unterschiedlicher Perspektiven für das Verständnis der Situation und die Qualität der Pflege ist. Wie Eltern die familiale Pflege ihrer kranken Kinder erleben und bewältigen, ist jedoch bisher kaum beschrieben. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht dieser Frage nach und stellt Teilergebnisse einer Grounded Theory Studie zur Perspektive von Eltern schwerstkranker Kinder zur Diskussion. Anhand von Daten aus neun Familien mit iebenslimitierend erkrankten Kindern wurde ein Realisierungsprozess der Eltern rekonstruiert, aus dem drei unterschiedliche Typen von Sorgearbeit resultieren. Je nach Typus wird die Situation des Kindes anders gedeutet und Pflegearrangements werden unterschiedlich gestaltet. Der Realisierungsprozess der Eltern wird indirekt durch die Situation des Kindes und maßgeblich durch Erfahrungen mit Akteurinnen und Akteuren des Versorgungssystems geprägt. Es konnte der Einfluss des Versorgungssystems auf die elterliche Bewältigung kritischer Lebensereignisse aufgezeigt werden. Diesem Einfluss sollte zukünftig mehr Bedeutung beigemessen werden. Eltern von der Diagnosestellung an im Prozess der Realisierung professionell zu begleiten, könnte ein Weg sein um die Versorgungsqualität von Familien mit erkrankten Kindern nachhaltig zu steigern.
Background
Lay family caregivers of patients receiving palliative care often confront stressful situations in the care of their loved ones. This is particularly true for families in the home-based palliative care settings, where the family caregivers are responsible for a substantial amount of the patient’s care. Yet, to our knowledge, no study to date has examined the family caregivers’ exposure to critical events and distress with home-based palliative care has been reported from Germany. Therefore, we attempt to assess family caregiver exposure to the dying patient’s critical health events and relate that to the caregiver’s own psychological distress to examine associations with general health within a home-based palliative care situation in Germany.
Methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted among 106 family caregivers with home-based palliative care in the Federal State of North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. We administered the Stressful Caregiving Adult Reactions to Experiences of Dying (SCARED) Scale. Descriptive statistics and linear regression models relating general health (SF-36) were used to analyze the data.
Results
The frequency of the caregiver’s exposure, or witness of, critical health events of the patient ranged from 95.2% “pain/discomfort” to 20.8% “family caregiver thought patient was dead”. The highest distress scores assessing fear and helpfulness were associated with “family caregiver felt patient had enough’” and “family caregiver thought patient was dead”. Linear regression analyses revealed significant inverse associations between SCARED critical health event exposure frequency (beta = .408, p = .025) and total score (beta = .377, p = .007) with general health in family caregivers.
Conclusions
Family caregivers with home-based palliative care in Germany frequently experience exposure to a large number of critical health events in caring for their family members who are terminally ill. These exposures are associated with the family caregiver’s degree of fear and helplessness and are associated with their worse general health. Thus the SCARED Scale, which is brief and easy to administer, appears able to identify these potentially upsetting critical health events among family caregivers of palliative care patients receiving care at home. Because it identified commonly encountered critical events in these patients and related them to adverse general health of family caregivers, the SCARED may add to clinically useful screens to identify family caregivers who may be struggling.