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Caregivers' most stressful burdens of urinary incontinent elderly relatives
Objective:
About 13 million adult American suffer from incontinence. Literature has revealed the importance of family caregiving to incontinent elders at home. Although it has been reported that combined mental impairment and incontinence are the top reasons for a family member to seek for the elder's institutional placement, there is little published research regarding the effect of elderly relatives in the community. The purpose of this study was to explore the most stressful care-related burdens perceived by caregivers of elderly relatives with urinary incontinence.
Design:
Data for this qualitative analysis were drawn from a large study. The intervention outcome study used a quasi-experimental or control groups.
Population, Sample, Setting, Years:
The data were collected from both care receivers and caregivers at pre-intervention (T1), post-intervention (T4), and post-study (T6) with a 9 month interval between the T1 and T6. The sample consisted of 59 elders with urinary incontinence and their primary caregivers from four states cross the United States. Elderly care recipients were, on average, 75 years of age with 83 present being female. Spouse (60%) and daughter caregivers (38%) averaged 62 years of age with 74 present being female. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected by using multiple outcome measures.
Concept or Variables Studied Together:
Caregiver burden perceived by caregivers of elderly relatives with urinary incontinence.
Methods:
This analysis selected qualitative data related to caregiver strain on T1 and T6. The caregivers' responses on a open-ended question ("considering everything involved in caregiving, what is the most stressful for you?") were analyzed by using content analysis method (Brink & Wood, 1989).
Findings:
Qualitative analysis resulted in the identification of the 6 most stressful caregiver stress among the 12 categories and 31 subcategories of sources of stress on both pre-test and post-study. The two most stressful burden at both T1 and T6 were lack of time for own needs and care receivers' emotional and behavioral problem. the third most stressful burden at T1 was dealing with urinary incontinence, however, it dropped to the sixth most stressful burden at T6 after the intervention with families was concluded.
Conclusions:
The findings of this study indicated not only the level of the caregiver burden but also the specific sources of the most burden from family caregivers' perspectives, thereby facilitating the development of interventions to reduce the caregiver's burden.
Implications:
The stressful burden of incontinence management decreased after the intervention but other burdens remained high. Examples of strategies that nurses can use include teaching family caregivers one or more skills to care about urinary incontinence, such as patterned urge-responses toileting method, and encouraging family caregivers of urinary incontinent relatives to seek for outside-home help for respite from their caregiving routine and specific interventions related to behavior management. |
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Primary Investigator
Hong Li, RN, PhD
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P.I. Institution Name
University of Rochester
Title
Associate Professor
Contact Address
School of Nursing
601 Elmwood Avenue, Box SON
Rochester, NY, 14642
USA
Contact E-mail
HongS_Li@urmc.rochester.edu
Contact Telephone
585-275-8863
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Secondary Investigators
Hong Li
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