An Exploratory Study on the Burden of Caregivers of Adult Burn Survivors

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the caregiver burden in families who took care of adult burn survivors and to explore various risk factors to impact family caregiver burden.Data were collected from November 2021 to February 2022 through an online survey and study participants were 92 caregivers of adult burn survivors aged 19 years or over. Descriptive statistics, correlations, and hierarchical multiple regressions were used for data analyses.Study participants showed medium levels of psychosocial characteristics including depressive symptoms, psychological wellbeing post-traumatic changes, and social support along with family caregiver burden. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that sex (B=-0.34, P<0.05), marital status (B=0.38, P<0.05), depressive symptoms (B=0.53, P<0.001), and social support (B=-0.21, P<0.05) were the major factors to impact family caregiver burden. In other words, being female, being married, having high depressive symptoms, or having low social support contributed to increasing the level of caregiver burden.Based on the study findings, we discussed practical intervention measures for reducing the burden of family caregivers of burn survivors.