Perceptions of symptom distress in lung cancer patients II: behavioral assessment by primary family caregivers

Literature on assessment of symptom distress has focused primarily on patients' and nurses' perceptions in the hospital setting. To date, no research has examined behavioral measurement and cues that primary family caregivers respond to when assessing patients' level of distress arising from individual symptom in the home setting. The qualitative data obtained from 37 primary family caregivers of patients with lung cancer was designed to augment quantitative results discussed elsewhere. Content analysis was performed on written responses to an open-ended questionnaire in which family caregivers identified cues that they responded to when assessing patients' distress from symptom items. The results identified the categories of impaired functioning and verbal cues as the most frequent indices of symptom distress. This study documents that certain behavioral measures for assessing symptom distress may be clinically useful to observers. Primary family caregivers are shown in this study to take a limited multidimensional approach in the assessment of patients' distress from symptom

Family caregiver perspective-taking and accuracy in estimating cancer patient symptom experiences

As family caregivers assume more prominent roles in the provision of home care to persons with serious illness, investigators must test the effectiveness of novel interventions to facilitate family caring for cancer patients. This article is based on results derived from a larger study carried out in Canada that was designed to compare 98 advanced cancer patient and family caregiver perceptions of 32 patient symptom experiences as captured by the Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale. We examined two main questions: (1) whether "natural" family caregivers' perceptions of patient lack of energy and worrying are more closely related to a self- or patient-oriented viewpoint and (2) whether induced "imagine-patient" perspective-taking can assist caregivers to achieve better perceptual accuracy. The caregiver's natural responses to neutral instructions that neither encouraged nor discouraged perspective-taking served as the baseline comparison with three other instructional sets, in which caregivers were prompted to: (1) provide a self-report on their own symptom experiences, (2) imagine how they would feel in the patient's situation (imagine-self), or (3) imagine how the patient would respond to his or her symptom situation (imagine-patient). Findings suggested that the family caregivers' natural judgments correspond most closely to what they do under an imagine-patient set than to what they do under any other set. Findings with respect to accuracy indicated that instructions to imagine the patient's perspective helped to prompt adjustments down from a self-oriented viewpoint, although definitive conclusions were precluded by difficulties with order effects.Canada Caregivers Family caregivers Assessment Symptoms Perspective

Cancer-Related Pain in Older Adults Receiving Palliative Care: Patient and Family Caregiver Perspectives on the Experience of Pain

BACKGROUND: Despite an emphasis on pain management in palliative care, pain continues to be a common problem for individuals with advanced cancer. Many of those affected are older due to the disproportionate incidence of cancer in this age group. There remains little understanding of how older patients and their family caregivers perceive patients’ cancer-related pain, despite its significance for pain management in the home setting

Perceptions of symptom distress in lung cancer patients I: congruence between patients and primary family caregivers

Part I of this two-part paper employs a comparative descriptive design to compare primary family caregivers' assessments of lung cancer patients' symptom distress with patients' own perceptions of symptom distress in the home setting. Part II describes the results of the qualitative component of this research. A convenience sample of 37 patient-family caregiver dyads completed the McCorkle and Young Symptom Distress Scale (SDS). Family caregivers' global scores were moderately correlated with patients' global scores (r = 0. 71; P < 0. 001). No significant differences in ratings were found for ten of the 1.3 symptoms assessed. Therefore, when the patient is unable to provide a self-report of symptom distress, health-care professionals may seriously consider family caregivers' assessments of patients' symptom distress to be reasonable estimates for at least ten of the 13 symptoms on the SDS

Perception of symptom distress in lung cancer patients I: agreement between patients and their caregiving relatives

This paper employs a comparative descriptive design to compare primary family caregivers' assessment of lung cancer patients' symptom distress with patients' own perceptions of symptom distress in the home setting. The second part describes the results of the qualitative component of this research. A convenience sample of 37 patient-family caregiver dyads completed the McCorkle and Young Symptom Distress Scale (SDS). Family caregivers' global scores were moderately correlated with patients' global scores (r = 0.71; P < 0.001). No significant differences in ratings were found for 10 of the 13 symptoms assessed. Therefore, when the patient is unable to provide a self-report of symptom distress, health-care professionals may seriously consider family caregivers' assessments of patients' symptom distress to be reasonable estimates for at least 10 of the 13 symptoms on the SDS