Family Caregiver Reports of Their Own and Patient Symptoms in Cancer Home Hospice Approaching End-of-Life.
Maija Reblin, Eli Iacob, Djin L Tay and 6 others
PMID 35689339WHAT IT FOUND
Family caregivers reported high patient fatigue and pain and low personal peace, and their own symptoms were linked with patient symptoms, especially as death approached.
Key findings
01Caregivers reported patient fatigue, pain, and poor appetite as the most prevalent moderate-to-severe patient symptoms, and lack of peace, lack of positivity, and fatigue as the most prevalent moderate-to-severe caregiver symptoms.
02Previous patient symptoms predicted higher current caregiver symptoms, while previous caregiver symptoms predicted lower current patient symptoms.
03Symptom severity worsened as death approached, and the strength of some previous-to-current associations increased near death.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Patient symptoms were reported by caregivers, not patients, so caregiver perception may bias the reports. Missing daily reports meant some lagged comparisons were not consecutive days, which may weaken the estimates. Caregivers joined at different times before death, so some had fewer reports near the end. The study did not assess all possible symptoms, and a larger sample would be needed to examine differences by gender, race/ethnicity, or relationship. The sequential analyses were exploratory and hypothesis-generating.
Declared interests
The authors declared no relevant conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that caregiver symptoms caused patient symptoms or that the reports prove a patient's symptoms were objectively present. These were caregiver-reported symptoms in an observational study, and the lagged associations were exploratory.