Cargando…

Caregivers’ Difficulty Rating Scale: Development and Initial Validation of a Tool to Identify the Unmet Needs of Indian Caregivers

BACKGROUND: Caring for a cancer patient is debilitating for caregivers, especially among Indian population, as culturally people prefer to care at home than at nursing home. Unavailability of palliative care services and professional caregivers adds to the family burden. OBJECTIVES: Caregiving diffi...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Bhardwaj, Tushti
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069612/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30111943
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/IJPC.IJPC_78_18
_version_ 1783343529959882752
author Bhardwaj, Tushti
author_facet Bhardwaj, Tushti
author_sort Bhardwaj, Tushti
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Caring for a cancer patient is debilitating for caregivers, especially among Indian population, as culturally people prefer to care at home than at nursing home. Unavailability of palliative care services and professional caregivers adds to the family burden. OBJECTIVES: Caregiving difficulties need assessment, but cancer-specific burden instruments are rare in the Indian context. This article presents development and initial validation of Caregiver's Difficulty Rating Scale (CDRS) and highlights the nature of caregiving burden on primary caregivers. METHODS: A total of 108 items were prepared in English after case interviews and reviewing the existing scales for face validity. Experts judged the items for content validity, of which 54 items with 100% agreement were retained. Forward-backward policy was used for Hindi translation. Reliability analysis was performed with thirty respondents. The final scale was administered to 100 caregivers of head-and-neck cancer patients for internal consistency and item-scale statistics. For construct validity, know-group comparison was made using EORTCQOL instrument with caregiver-patients dyads. RESULTS: High correlation among the three translated versions (r > 0.76, P < 0.01), Cronbach's alpha (0.948), and spilt-half coefficient (0.965) suggested translation reliability and scale consistency. Caregiver's burden had significant negative correlation with global quality of life of patients (−0.514**). Help for food arrangement, managing work–life, and treatment cost were the highly rated difficulties. CONCLUSION: CDRS had fifty items under four dimensions – physical, emotional, social, and financial. The scale requires further work on convergent and divergent validity and sensitivity to change which are underway. The study has implications for respite care. Community engagements and caregivers’ support group may work as sources of emotional and social support.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6069612
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2018
publisher Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-60696122018-08-15 Caregivers’ Difficulty Rating Scale: Development and Initial Validation of a Tool to Identify the Unmet Needs of Indian Caregivers Bhardwaj, Tushti Indian J Palliat Care Original Article BACKGROUND: Caring for a cancer patient is debilitating for caregivers, especially among Indian population, as culturally people prefer to care at home than at nursing home. Unavailability of palliative care services and professional caregivers adds to the family burden. OBJECTIVES: Caregiving difficulties need assessment, but cancer-specific burden instruments are rare in the Indian context. This article presents development and initial validation of Caregiver's Difficulty Rating Scale (CDRS) and highlights the nature of caregiving burden on primary caregivers. METHODS: A total of 108 items were prepared in English after case interviews and reviewing the existing scales for face validity. Experts judged the items for content validity, of which 54 items with 100% agreement were retained. Forward-backward policy was used for Hindi translation. Reliability analysis was performed with thirty respondents. The final scale was administered to 100 caregivers of head-and-neck cancer patients for internal consistency and item-scale statistics. For construct validity, know-group comparison was made using EORTCQOL instrument with caregiver-patients dyads. RESULTS: High correlation among the three translated versions (r > 0.76, P < 0.01), Cronbach's alpha (0.948), and spilt-half coefficient (0.965) suggested translation reliability and scale consistency. Caregiver's burden had significant negative correlation with global quality of life of patients (−0.514**). Help for food arrangement, managing work–life, and treatment cost were the highly rated difficulties. CONCLUSION: CDRS had fifty items under four dimensions – physical, emotional, social, and financial. The scale requires further work on convergent and divergent validity and sensitivity to change which are underway. The study has implications for respite care. Community engagements and caregivers’ support group may work as sources of emotional and social support. Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC6069612/ /pubmed/30111943 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/IJPC.IJPC_78_18 Text en Copyright: © 2018 Indian Journal of Palliative Care http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0 This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
spellingShingle Original Article
Bhardwaj, Tushti
Caregivers’ Difficulty Rating Scale: Development and Initial Validation of a Tool to Identify the Unmet Needs of Indian Caregivers
title Caregivers’ Difficulty Rating Scale: Development and Initial Validation of a Tool to Identify the Unmet Needs of Indian Caregivers
title_full Caregivers’ Difficulty Rating Scale: Development and Initial Validation of a Tool to Identify the Unmet Needs of Indian Caregivers
title_fullStr Caregivers’ Difficulty Rating Scale: Development and Initial Validation of a Tool to Identify the Unmet Needs of Indian Caregivers
title_full_unstemmed Caregivers’ Difficulty Rating Scale: Development and Initial Validation of a Tool to Identify the Unmet Needs of Indian Caregivers
title_short Caregivers’ Difficulty Rating Scale: Development and Initial Validation of a Tool to Identify the Unmet Needs of Indian Caregivers
title_sort caregivers’ difficulty rating scale: development and initial validation of a tool to identify the unmet needs of indian caregivers
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069612/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30111943
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/IJPC.IJPC_78_18
work_keys_str_mv AT bhardwajtushti caregiversdifficultyratingscaledevelopmentandinitialvalidationofatooltoidentifytheunmetneedsofindiancaregivers