Health-Related Quality Of Life And Its Predictors Among The Caregivers Of Patients With Chronic Heart Failure

Objective: To understand the quality of life（QOL） of family caregivers of chronicheart failure patients by investigation, to find the impact factors of the QOL ofcaregivers using a variety of methods, to explore the interaction among theinfluencing factors, and to provide reference basis for clinical nurses formulatingintervention measures.Methods: A descriptive study was used,200chronic heart failure patiets and theirfamily caregivers were asked to participate in the study, they were investigated withthe Caregiving Context Questionnaire, the Social Support Rating Scale, the GeneralSelf-Efficacy Scale, the Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview and the36-item Short FormHealth Survey. The study was conducted by the “ABC-X”model from the familypressure theory, and a path analysis was carried out combined with the results of theunivariate analysis, the correlation analysis and the hierarchical regression analysis.Results: The result showed that the QOL of heart failure caregivers was negativelyimpacted, especially the Role Physical and the Role Emotional dimensions. Pathanalysis showed that:①the impact factors of physical health were: caregiverburden(-0.437), caregiver comorbidity(-0.279), self-efficacy(0.196), caregiverage(-0.157), caregiving duration(-0.150), social support(0.131) and finacialsituation(0.082).②Factors that showed significant impact on the mental health were:caregiver burden(-0.507), social support(0.278), self-efficacy(0.171) and caregivercomorbidity(-0.159).③Caregiver age, caregiver comorbidity, social support,self-efficacy and caregiver burden could affect the QOL of caregivers directly, whilefinacial situation, caregiving duration and social support affected the QOL by twomediating varables indirectly, factors acting as the mediating variables were caregiverburden and self-efficacy.④According to the total effects of the path analysis,caregiver burden was the strongest predictor of caregivers’ QOL.Conclusions: It can be concluded that the QOL of family caregivers were negatively affected when they were caring for the chronic heart failure patients, and the impactprocess was very complicated. Some factors(eg. caregiver age, caregiver comorbidity,social support, self-efficacy and caregiver burden) impacted the caregivers QOLdirectly, while some(eg. finacial situation, caregiving duration and socail support)affected the QOL indirectly by the mediating variables(eg. caregiver burden,self-efficacy). The results suggest the clincal workers pay attention to the caregiversof heart failure patients, future researchers can take some interventions(eg. helpcaregivers to manage stress, strengthen the socail support and enhance theself-efficacy), and test the effects of these intervetions as well.