Analysis of the Article on the Burden Encountered by the Caregivers
The article reviewed in this discussion outlines the concept of caregiver burden. The subject of caregiver burden has been the center of many researches, in which the studies are focusing on highlighting the challenges that are encountered by the caregivers who are assigned to deliver care services to the patients diagnosed with a different type of diseases. In the recent years, treatment services have broadened up, thus, leading to the increase of the cases of caregiver’s burden that relate to the nurse caregivers and family caregivers. The caregivers affected group is the one that provide care for the individuals with chronic diseases, mental illnesses, and the aging population. Grunfeld et al. (2004) assert in the recent years, the role of the family caregivers have been widely recognized, particularly that of the people taking cares of the dying cancer patient.
Problem Statement
The purpose of the study in the article is to examine the predictors of caregivers’ burden, with the article focusing on the caregivers who looks after the individuals with the dementia. In fact, the research aims at verifying that the dementia caregivers have been found to be more burdened by the health care problem than any other group of caregivers. The study is relevant to solving the problem of caregiver burden, especially the people proving care for a patient with chronical diseases, as it aims it present that caregiver burden affects both the health of the person receiving care and the caregiver himself. The researcher focuses on bringing forward a reliable and valid study, in which the investigator focuses on presenting the research finding according to the presents data and previous studies within the similar subject.
Literature Review
For the study presented in the article to show supportive information concerning the caregiver burden, the investigator has focused on reviewing present and previous studies that touches on the same topic. Although the researcher says that the previous studies have not confirmed the predictors of caregiver burden in the national representative population, the researcher reviews the aspect of caregiver burden predictors with the available literature and use the subject as the primary concept in the literature review section. The article focus reveals that in the U.S, Canada, and Europe, there has been insufficient research on the issue of caregiver burden and most of the research does not represent the national population. The literature review for this article has also looked at the healthcare response regarding the caregiver burden matters. Here, the article points out that researchers and clinicians have come up with major factors causing caregiver burden.
Kim, et al. (2011) note that the degree of caregiver burden relies on contextual factors, determinants that relate to caregiving tasks, and primary stressors such as social status of the care patients and caregivers, the progress of the disease that the patient is diagnosed with, and observed stress that is caused by the caregiving tasks. In addition, in the review of the literature, the researcher uses both present and past sources. From the understanding of the concepts that are presented in the literature review, on can say that the reason why the researcher selected to use both the current and past sources is to evidently show that the issue of caregiver burden has become a trend, as it affects both the patients and caregivers.
Theoretical Framework
In the study, the researcher uses theoretical and conceptual framework interchangeably despite the difference between the two concepts. In the article, Kim, et al. (2011) draw the conceptual framework from the nursing concept, as the researcher use substantial models to execute the study. The conceptual framework used group predictors of caregivers in a way that the researcher uses the variables in the framework as the concept that describes the research and its relationship to the nursing behaviors. The research framework has broadened up, as the investigator has not solely focused on nursing discipline. In fact, Kim, at el. (2011) use other disciplines such as social factors to define the study conceptual framework for this study. For instance, in the study, contextual variables such as social demographic factors that relate to the caregivers and the patient are used in the creation of the conceptual framework for the study.
The researcher talks of variables, whereby the independent variables used in the study are demographic variables, the number of hours that the caregivers spent when providing care, coping strategies, the number of helpers, and care patient functional status. The dependent variable is the topic of the study, where the researcher uses the independent variable to answer the research question relating to the subject of the survey. The researcher uses the variables to measure and create questionnaires that are presented to the participant of the study. It is through the research variables where the researcher mentions the research questions that are used for the survey.
Methodology
The method design for the research as outlined in the article is cross-sectional correlation design, where the researcher relied on secondary data analysis. For this study, Kim, et al. (2011) used secondary data collection method, where the researcher relied most on the data that published in 2004 by the National Alliance for Caregiving and American Association of Retired person group. The two groups did an interview through a telephone survey, whereby the research randomly selected participant from seven states. The researcher selected to use probability sampling, where the samples were selected randomly. The study sample size is 6.139 United States adults who are in the aged 18 and above. In the selection of the sample, the researcher used 1,247 caregivers who were interview by the two organizations.
Ethical Consideration
In the article, the researcher maintained ethical aspects, as failure to consider would have influenced the result of the study. More so, through the understanding of the ethical issues set for the research task, the researcher carried the study that was approved by the institutional board. According to Kim, et al. (2011), the data was endorsed by the National Alliance Caregivers (NAC) and AARP public policy institute for ethical purposes. Another aspect that shows the issue of ethical consideration in the ethical relates to the subject confidentiality, whereby the data that the investigator used were anonymized and identified with cautious protection on privacy. Lastly, for the researcher to be more ethical with the study, the article reveals that the surveyor obtained Institutional Review Board approval from the University of Virginia before carrying out the task of data analysis. From the discussion, it is apparent that the article findings were based on the ethical background, which is established for the people who carries out research that involves the human participant for data.
Data analysis
In the article, the correlation matrix is used to do the data analysis, whereby the researcher constructs a matrix among all the variables that were identified before doing the methodology. Kim, et al. (2011) reveal that the correlation matrix that was used for the data analysis purposes was based on Pearson correlation coefficient. After data analysis, the result of the data is presented in form of tables. In Table 1, the investigator presents data showing a demographic description of people with the chronical disease (dementia) and their caregivers. In the other two tables (Table 2 and 3), the researcher presents the issue of caregiving-related factors on caregiver burden and the result of multiple hierarchical analysis respectively.
From the study Kim, et al. (2011) found out that the key group of predictors that is socio-demographic factors, caregiving-related factors, and illness-related factors, explains caregiver burden in a unique manner. The study concludes and says that care-recipient related factors are the most significant predictors that cause caregiver burden. To summarize, the researcher says that the other two factors that are social demographic and caregiving-related factors are recognized for aggravating the caregiver burden.
Implication of the Study
In the article, the researcher draws important implications that relates to the topic, nursing practice, and policy. Kim, et al. (2011) point that the research provides basic information that relates to the factors that lead to the rise of the caregiver burden and if the nursing board reviews the information, intervention for clinician and clients affected by the caregiver burden is needed. The article can also suggest for comprehensive assessment on the problem of a caregiver, where the healthcare system will be required to come up with approaches that can reduce unnecessary patients and nurse burden. Finally, the article can assist other researchers to isolate the likelihood of caregiver burden that is based on national wide data, which will help the nursing researchers to generalize the findings on the subject.
Strength and Limitation of the Study
The limitation relating to the study as portrayed in the article concerns the respondents, as the data received through the secondary was not defined in the primary data form. As the data was based on self-report, it was difficult for the researcher to come up with a precise information to form primary data. However, the research has strengths that relate to the nursing work. Nurses’ caregivers can use the research findings to learn how to cope with the task of providing care to a people who are diagnosed with any form disease in particular dementia. Finally, the research is not necessary to the dementia caregivers, as it can also educate caregivers who are assigned to provide care for people with other forms of diseases, mostly the family caregivers.
Conclusion
The researcher concludes by saying that it is essential for the healthcare system to identify the predictors’ factors that cause caregiver burden. The article, point out that it is necessary for the nurses and hospitals to examine the different component of caregiver’s burden in order to highlights findings that can be used to detect and reduce the caregiver burden. The findings can be used by the hospitals to take comprehensive approaches that will assist the caregivers cope with the challenges associated with the job of offering care to people with dementia or any other form of illness.
References
Grunfeld, E., Coyle, D., Whelan, T., Clinch, J., Reyno, L., Earle, C. C., & Glossop, R. (2004). Family caregiver burden: results of a longitudinal study of breast cancer patients and their principal caregivers. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 170(12), 1795-1801. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC419766/
Kim, H., Chang, M., Rose, K., & Kim, S. (2011). Predictors of caregiver burden in caregivers of individuals with dementia. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(4), 846-855. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05787.x
