만성환자를 돌보는 가족원의 돌봄의 상황과 가족원의 스트레스 및 사회적 지지와의 관계 = The Relationship with Caregiving Context and Caregiving Stress and Social Support for Wives Caregivers of Chronic Ill Patients.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Nowadays, chronic diseases are prevalent. Chronically ill patients need someone who manages and monitors their condition at hand and these personnel, if informal caregivers, are no other than family members.
In our society, it is natural that family take care of a sick member. Family as open system influence mutually including health status and emotion. So illness of a family member affects all members and especially, a member charged with primary caregiver affects extremely much. It is not very long since growth interest gives family caregivers in our country. Before the end of 1980, no one was concerned about hard time of those caregivers becouse of our rule, that is, they only perform their duty.
This study purposed to determine the role of caregiving context affecting social support and caregiving stress caregivers.
Data collection used questionnaire with interview and subjects were 191 wives caregivers of hospitalized patients.
Caregiving context consisted of occupational status of caregiver, age of youngest child, income, staying hours at bedside, available 2nd caregiver, physical health of caregiver, reciprocity, admission days, ADL of patient, illness stage and severity, prognosis of patient.
The major of caregivers was middle aged and kept patients all day in the hospital without respite and their income was lower than that of national data.
The high risk group for caregiving stress of caregivers had following characteristics-low income less than 500 thousands Won, staying all day in the hospital, poor physical health, lower reciprocity with patients, 31 admission days or more, assisting a lot of ADL of patient, and caring patient in terminal and dying in illness. And the caregivers who showed lowest caregiving stress revealed following characteristics-income more than 1500 thousands Won, less staying hours at bedside, good their physical health, higher reciprocity, below 15 admission days, independent ADL of patient, caring patient with diagnostic stage and mild severity, curable illness.
Regarding with perceived social support of caregivers, higher support group had follwing characteristics-their children age of 6-17 years old, helped by 2nd caregiver, showing high reciprocity with patients, caring patients in diagnostic stage. And the caregivers with no child, no 2nd caregiver, lower reciprocity, managing stage of illness perceived the lowest support.
In this study, the variables like that the physical health of caregiver, illness chracteristics including illness stage, severity, prognosis, and reciprocity with patients were very significant regarding with caregiver research.
The results of this study can implicate to discriminate and support a risk group of caregiving stress. We should try to develop nursing interventions for caregivers to protect their health and retain their family function.