Burdens and Quality of Life of Chronic Disease Patients' Family Caregivers: A Systematic Review

摘要

Chronic illness is a disease that requires long-term treatment and care. Chronic illnesses have a big impact not only on patients but also on family caregivers which can affect the quality of life and even become a burden on family caregivers. This systematic review aims to find out the view of burdens and quality of life of chronic disease patients' family caregivers. Qualitative research with a systematic review approach using content analysis with a search method was used. It also used an electronic data base consisting of ProQuest, PubMed, Google Scholar, science direct, and Springer. This research journals focused on the problems and quality of life of chronic disease patients' family caregivers that can be accessed in full text by the publishing year of 2010-2019. Research on the problems and quality of life of chronic disease patients' family caregivers has been carried out in several countries with different methods. The results of a systematic review illustrate that the majority of family caregivers are women and are patients' spouse. The problems of family caregivers in providing care to patients with chronic diseases are at moderate to high levels with factors that affect the level of education, patients' quality of life, relationships with patients, and family support. In addition, the quality of life of family caregivers is at moderate to low levels with factors that affect the relationship with the patient, the patient's age and condition, level of education, religion, emotional distress, and family and social support. The higher the problem of family caregivers is, the lower the quality of life will be. Family caregivers have high problems with low quality of life. Future studies are expected to determine supportive care to ease the burden and improve the quality of life of chronic disease patients' family caregivers.