A short form tool for clinical assessment of caregivers' reaction.

Abstract

Background: Caregivers take on several tasks to support the patients during their disease trajectory. The price caregivers pay might have impact on their health, schedule, necessity of support from others, economic situation, and quality of life. Therefore, health care personnel need assessment tools to capture the caregivers' reaction and situation. Clinical practice is characterized as a busy setting and long assessment tools might be time-consuming to complete.

Methods: This study aims to present a short form from an original (long) version of The Caregiver Reaction Assessment (24 items) and to show how these tools correlate in a repeated measures design with three assessment points. Demographics and clinical variables are analysed by means of descriptive statistics. To assess possible sex differences for the long version of The Caregiver Reaction Assessment, the short version of it, and a single item assessing global quality of life, we performed independent sample t-test and Pearson's correlation analysis.

Results: Sufficient correlation was shown between the long version (24 items), the short version (6 items), and the single item measuring global quality of life. We present how assessment of the caregivers' reaction and situation can be managed by means of a stepwise approach with one single item on quality of life as the first step, a short form tool on caregiver reaction as the next, and finally a long version of a reputable tool, The Caregiver Reaction Assessment, as the third step.

Conclusion: In this study we have shown how different tools correlate. We suggest these tools to be used in a three-step approach to assess caregivers' reaction and situation.