EVALUATION OF THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF CAREGIVERS OF PATIENTS WITH A GASTROSTOMY FEEDING TUBE

Abstract

The life quality of patient's caregivers who have a gastrostomy feeding tube at home has not been adequately researched, although it consists of an integral part of good home care. The aim of this study was to investigate the quality of life (QoL) of caregivers and identify the effective factors. A quantitative sample was created by 120 caregivers of patients with a gastrostomy feeding tube. The participants answered the following collection of questions: a sociodemographic characterization form, the SF-36 Health Research Questionnaire, the Greek Multidimensional Fatigue Questionnaire (MFI), and the Caring Behaviors Inventory-24 (24-item CBI or CBI-24). Regarding the SF-36 questionnaire, the lowest scores were recorded for the summary mental health scale (average value 43.8), the summary physical health scale (average value 49.8), as well as for the physical role dimension (average value 57.1). The data showed a positive correlation between married caregivers and cohabitants and physical functioning scores (P = 0.001) and that increasing year of care was associated with lower physical functioning scores (P = 0.001). In addition, an increase in the overall fatigue score (MFI-20) was associated with a decrease in the overall health score (P <0.001), vitality, emotional role, mental health (P <0.001), physical pain. (P <0.001) and social functionality (P <0.001). Moreover, informal caregivers had a higher score of physical pain than standard caregivers (P = 0.010). The results of this analysis suggest that the QoL of caregivers is affected across various domains and underscore the importance of QoLresearch particularly in the target populations.