The relationship between socioeconomic status, medical accessibility, hope and psychological resilience of caregivers of children with chronic kidney disease in China: structural equation model

Abstract

BackgroundChronic kidney disease (CKD) is the third most common cause of death after cancer and heart disease. The continuous treatment of children with CKD was greatly challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly impacted the CKD children’s prognosis and the caregivers’ psychological status. However, the influence mechanism of socioeconomic status, medical delay duration, traffic pressure, and online consultation duration on caregivers’ hope and psychological resilience still lacks relevant evidence.MethodsThis study investigated the general social information, hope, and psychological resilience of 247 caregivers with CKD in 13 provinces of China in March 2020. Factor analysis and an exploratory Structural Equation Model ( SEM ) were used to find the best-fit model, and Bootstrapping was used to calculate the 95% CI of indirect effects.ResultsThe factor analysis obtained four common factors, namely, socioeconomic status (annual family income, education, and career stability), medical accessibility (online consultation duration, medical delay duration, and traffic pressure), hope (positive attitude, positive action, and intimate relationship) and psychological resilience (optimism, tenacity, and strength), with the cumulative contribution rate of 65.34%. Bootstrapping obtains the socioeconomic status β = 0.30 (95% CI [0.14, 0.47], P = 0.002), medical accessibility β = 0.31 (95% CI [0.12, 0.47], P = 0.002), and hope β = 0.40 (95% CI [0.27, 0.52], P = 0.002) has a direct impact on psychological resilience of CKD children caregivers, followed by medical accessibility β = 0.20 (95% CI [0.10, 0.38], P = 0.001) and hope β = 0.23 (95% CI [0.16, 0.32], P = 0.001) plays a mediating role between socioeconomic status and psychological resilience. The indirect impact effect β = 0.35 (95% CI [0.25, 0.50], P = 0.001) is greater than the direct impact effect β = 0.30 (95% CI [0.14, 0.47], P = 0.002).ConclusionsSufficient attention should still be given to children with immunodeficiency after the COVID-19 pandemic, such as CKD, to avoid infection of deadly. Secondly, the government should vigorously develop Primary medical institutions to ensure efficient treatment of severe patients in tertiary hospitals; Finally, the professional literacy of medical workers in remote diagnosis and treatment should be improved to enhance the country’s emergency response capacity for similar major public events and the requirements for normalised epidemic prevention and control.