• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.199-211
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• 2000

Today, more chronically ill and handicapped children are being cared for at home by a family member caregiver. The task of caring for a family member may feel burden that the caregiver has less time and money and more work. Family functioning and their burden have influence on coping and adaptation of families with chronically-ill children. This study attempted to identify the levels of burden and family functioning in families of children with cerebral palsy and to examine their relationships. The instruments were burden scale developed by Suh and Oh(1993), and a modified Feetham Family Functioning Survey based on Roberts and Feetham.(1982). The subjects were 98 parents of children, under 15 years, who have cerebral palsy and being treated and living in Pusan. Data were collected through a self-administered question- aire from April 26 to May 29. The collected data were tested using frequencies, percentiles, means, t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficient with SPSSWIN program. The results of this study were as follows ; 1. The mean rating scores of burden and family functioning were 2.79±.51 and 4.12±.69, respectively. 2. The relationships between general character- istics and burden were statistically significant difference : degree of children's handicap(F=6.333, P<.01). The relationships between general characteristics and family functioning were statistically significant differences : familial relation with the children(F=3.628, P<.05), caregiver's health status(F=4.359, P<.05), age of children (F=4.185, P<.05), and duration of treatment (F=6.802, P<.01). 3. In families of children with cerebral palsy, there was significantly negative correlation between the burden of parents and the performance of family functioning(r=-.230, P<.05). There were significantly negative correlations between the burden of parents and the satisfaction of family functioning (r=-.211, P<.05), and between the perceived importance and the satisfaction of family functioning(r=-.481, P<.01); however, there was a positive correlation between the performance and the perceived importance of family functioning(r=.425, P<.01). In conclusion, this study suggests that families of children with cerebral palsy need family-focused nursing interventions as supportive care for relieving their burden and for improving family functioning.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.200-213
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• 2004

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to create an electronic nursing record form to build a hospice nursing process database to be used in the u-hospital EMR system. Specific aims of the study were: 1. To generate a complete, accurate, and simple electronic nursing record form. 2. To verify its appropriateness following documentation with the standardized hospice protocol. 3. To verify its validity and finalize the hospice nursing process database through discussion among hospice professionals. Methods: Nursing records from three independent hospice organizations were collected and analyzed by five expert hospice nurses with more than 10 years of experience, and a nursing record database was developed. This database was applied to 81 hospice patients at three hospice organizations to verify its completeness. Results: 1. An electronic nursing record form with completeness, accuracy, and simplicity was developed. 2. The completeness of the standardized home hospice service protocol was 95.86 percent. 3. The hospice nursing process database contains 18 items on health problems, 79 items on related causes and major symptoms, and 229 items on nursing interventions. Conclusion: The new nursing record form and database will reduce documentation time and articulate and streamline the working process among team members. They can also improve the quality of hospice services, and ultimately enable us to estimate hospice service costs.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.467-486
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• 1993

Today, more chronically ill and handicapped people are being cared for at home by a family member caregiver. The task of caring for a family momber may mean that the caregiver has less time and money and more work which may result in increased fatigue and symptoms of illness. This study was done to examine the well-being of family caregivers. Fifty three family caregivers were interviewed. Concepts were measured using existing tools and included : Burden(25 item 5 point scale), Social sup-port (21 item 7 point scale), Health status defined by a symptom checklist(48 item S point scale), and Well -being defined by a quality of life scale (14 item 7 point scale) and caregiving activities. Data collection was done by interview and Q-sort. Social support and well - being were positively correlated as were symptoms and burden. Symptoms and burden were negatively correlated with social support and well-being. Items on the quality of life scale had a mean score range from 3.09 to 4.96. Quality of life related to income was lowest (3.09) but the desire to use more money for the patient was rated 2.90 on the burden scale where the item means ranged from 0.73 to 3.55. The high mean of 3.55 was for obligation to give care and the low 0.73 was (or not feeling that this was helping the patient. Mean scores for symptoms ranged from 0.26 to 2.15 with the 2.15 being for “worry about all the things that have to be done.” Over half of the patients were dependent for help with some activities of daily living. The caregivers reported doing an average of 3.40 out of five patient care activities including bathing (77.4%), shampooing (67.9%), and washing face and hands (49.1％), and 3.74 out of seven home maintenance activities including laundry (98.1％), cooking (83.0%), and arranging bed-ding(75.5%). The caregivers reported their spouse as one of the main sources of social support, including in times of loneliness and anger The mean score for loneliness as burden was 2.15 and ranked fourth and 31 (58.5％) of the sample reported being lonely recently and not being satisfied with the support received. Similarly anger caused by the patient was given a mean score of 2.13, and anger was reported to have been present recently by 38 (71.7%) of the sample and satis-faction with the support given was low. Having someone to help deal with anger ranked twelfth out of 21 items on the social support scale and had a mean score of 3.98 (range 3.49 to 5.98). Spouses were reported as a major source of social support but the fact that 50% of the caregivers were caring for a spouse, may account for the quality of this source of social support having been affected. These caregivers faced the same problems as others at the same stage of life. but because of the situation, there was a strain on their resources, particularly financial and social. In conclusion it was found that burden is correlated negatively to quality of life and positively to symptoms, but in this sample, symptoms and bur-den were scored relatively low. Does this indicate that the caregivers accept caregiving as part of their destiny and accept the quality of their lives with burden and symptoms just being a part of caregiving\ulcorner Does the correlation between the bur-den and symptoms indicate they are a measure of the same phenomenon or that the sample was of a more mobile, less burdened group of caregivers\ulcorner Quality of life was the one variable that was significant in explaining the varience on burden. Further study is needed to validate the conclusions found in this study but they indicate a need for nurses to ap-proach these caregivers with a plan tailored to each individual situation and to give consideration to interventions directed at improving quality of life and expanding social support networks for those caring for spouses.