Chinese parents' caregiving ability for children with haematological malignancies: A latent class analysis.
Jingting Wang, Xuanyi Bi, Jichuan Wang and 8 others
PMID 35437930WHAT IT FOUND
Parents of children with blood cancer fell into high, medium and low caregiving ability groups.
General daily care was strongest, but finding support and understanding disease were common weak points. Check which caregiver tasks are difficult before assuming overall ability.
Key findings
01Parents of children with haematological malignancies were grouped into three caregiving ability classes: high (131, 33.4%), medium (170, 43.4%) and low (91, 23.2%).
02General caregiving was the least difficult domain for all classes, while appraising supportive resources was the most difficult for the medium and low classes.
03Lower household income, less daily caregiving time and a child younger than 3 years were associated with being in the low caregiving ability class rather than the high or medium class; leukaemia diagnosis was associated with being in the low class rather than the high class.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show how parents' caregiving ability changes during treatment. Participants were recruited from three children's hospitals in large Chinese cities, and all parents had at least high school education, so results may not apply to other settings or less-educated caregivers. Most children had leukaemia, so findings may not apply to other haematological malignancies. The main measure was parents' self-report about the previous week, so the classes depend on how parents rated their own difficulty. The analysis assumed the 23 questionnaire items were independent of each other.
Declared interests
There were no known conflicts of interest. The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat the latent classes as proof that any parent characteristic causes low caregiving ability. The study is cross-sectional and based on self-report, so it can show associations but cannot establish cause or predict how ability changes during treatment.