GENDER, AGE, AND CAREGIVING AS MEDIATORS OF CARDIOVASCULAR ILLNESS AND RECOVERY.
Contributors: University of California, San Francisco.
Published: 1988
Number of pages: 271
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Sociology, Individual and Family Studies.; Health Sciences, Human Development.
Description: The purpose of this study was to explain psychosocial and physiological recovery from cardiac surgery as influenced by the patient's baseline cardiac status and by caregiver characteristics, such as caregiving burden, caregiver age and gender, perceived social support, and caregiver mood states. A secondary aim was to evaluate different measures of patient recovery and to describe under which conditions these measures appeared to be valid for clinical and measurement purposes.

A convenience sample of 117 cardiac surgery patients and their spouses (234 subjects) from 5 northern California hospitals was obtained to tap patient and spouse responses at three critical perioperative data points: the day before surgery, and one and three months post discharge.

Physiological adaptation and recovery were assessed using the New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional status criteria and a measure of self-reported physical recovery. Individual psychosocial variables were measured with the Profile of Mood States (POMS), a measure of family satisfaction (Family APGAR), the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (KMS), the Psychosocial Adjustment to Illness Scale (PAIS), the Social Support Scale (SSS) and related to caregiving burden (Zarit Caregiving Burden Inventory) and the major variables of interest, gender and age.

The primary hypothesis was tested in a staged non-recursive model and was supported in part. High levels of spousal caregiving burden as measured by the Zarit and poor cardiac functional status (NYHA) preoperatively predicted poor physiological and psychological patient recovery as measured by NYHA functional status, mood disturbance (POMS), and patient self-reported recovery at 3 months post discharge. Twenty-two percent of the variance was explained when caregiving burden and NYHA functional status were regressed against patient mood disturbance. Self-reported recovery and NYHA status were also predicted by the model with 15% and 17% of the variance explained. Caregiver gender was found to affect caregiving burden indirectly, but not directly, through its impact on mood disturbance, however, the patient's NYHA functional status did not significantly affect burden as had been predicted in the hypothesis. Age of the caregiver directly influenced caregiving burden but did not directly affect caregiver mood disturbance. Spouses of the youngest patients expressed the greatest caregiving burden. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-01, Section: B, page: 0126.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, 1988.

School code: 0034.