Functional health literacy and caregiving burden among family caregivers of patients with end‐stage renal disease

Abstract

Family caregivers of patients with end‐stage renal disease (ESRD) experience significant caregiver‐related burden, yet the contribution of their functional health literacy (FHL) to caregiving burden has not been elucidated. We investigated the magnitude of FHL and caregiving burden and their association in a descriptive, correlational cross‐sectional study of family caregivers of Jordanian patients with ESRD (N = 88). The short versions of the FHL for Adults and the Zarit Burden Interview were used for assessment of caregivers. Demographic and clinical information of patients and their family caregivers were self‐reported. Of family caregivers, 41% had limited FHL and 38% experienced high caregiver burden. FHL and history of comorbidity in family caregivers predicted caregiving burden independent of demographic and clinical factors. Consideration of FHL in support interventions for family caregivers may minimize some of the high perceived caregiving burden, but clinical trials of such interventions are needed to confirm this conclusion.

Factors Associated with Burden in Caregivers of Patients with End-Stage Kidney Disease (A Systematic Review)

“…Four studies highlighted a negative correlation between CB and caregiver age [9,21,25,46]. In contrast, four studies reported that older caregivers have greater difficulty coping and experience higher levels of burden than younger caregivers [5,10,12,16,28,30,31,37,39]. Rodrigue et al [5] reported higher CB with increased caregiver age, although this study did not find a statistically significant correlation and suggested that further research is required, using a larger sample population to determine if a relationship exists.…”

“…In this review, 38 studies investigated the level of CB in advanced stages of CKD patients and reported contrasting findings. Three studies reported high levels of burden [5,6,16]. The majority of the included studies reported moderate to severe levels of burden in caregivers of patients undergoing HD [9,10,18,20,21,27,30,32,34,37,39,46].…”

“…Of the included studies, 35 used a cross sectional design [5,[9][10][11][12] and three provided cross sectional data within other designs; one used a quasi-experimental design [46], one used a longitudinal design [47], and one a mixed method design [6]. Studies included in the review were completed in a variety of countries, including: seven in Turkey [11,[22][23][24]27,33,46], four in the USA [5,18,29,44], four in Iran [31,34,37,39], two in Brazil [25,26], two in Japan [34,41,43], two in Saudi Arabia [9,21], three in China [12,42,45], two in Nigeria [6,17], two in Jordan [16,19], two in India [32,35]; and a single study in Nepal [10], Canada [38], Pakistan [40], Greece [36], Spain [20], Singapore [47], Vietnam [30], and Indonesia…”

“…Twenty-seven studies of the thirty-eight studies reviewed explored the age of caregivers [5,[9][10][11][12]16,19,21,22,24,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]36,37,39,45,46] and patients as a predictor of CB [9,16,19,20,24,25,31,34,37,39,41,45]. Four studies highlighted a negative correlation between CB and caregiver age [9,21,25,46].…”

“…Caregivers of older care recipients had a significantly higher level of CB than those who provide care to younger care recipients [9,20,39,41], while a single study reported high scores in one of the CB components (environmental component) in caregivers of younger patients [25]. The remaining studies reported that caregiver age did not influence feelings of burden in caregivers [11,19,24,26,27,29,32,34,45] or patient age [16,19,24,26,31,34,37,45].…”