Article Text
Abstract
Background Family caregivers of patients with advanced illness at end of life often report high levels of emotional distress. To address this emotional distress is necessary to have adequate and reliable screening tools.
Aim This study analyses the psychometric properties and clinical utility of the Family Caregiver Emotional Detection Scale for caregivers of patients with end-stage cancer (DME-C, Spanish acronym) who are receiving palliative care (PC).
Design Multicentre, cross-sectional study.
Settings/participants Family caregivers of patients with advanced cancer at end of life receiving palliative treatment were interviewed to explore their emotional distress through the DME-C scale and other instruments measuring anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)), distress thermometer (DT) and overload (B), as well as a clinical psychological assessment (CPA).
Results 138 family caregivers, 85 (61.6%) female and 53 (38.4%) male, with an average age of 59.69±13.3 participated in the study. The reliability of the scale, as measured by Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.76, and its stability over time was 0.734. Positive, significant correlations were found between the DME-C and the scores for anxiety and depression registered on the HADS scale, as well as with the total result of this latter scale and the results for B, the DT and the CPA. A statistical analysis of the receiver-operating characteristic curves showed that the scale has a sensitivity and specificity of 75%, and that the cut-off point for the detection of emotional distress was a score ≥11. Fifty-four per cent of the caregivers displayed emotional distress according to this scale.
Conclusions The DME-C displays good psychometric properties. It is simple, short, reliable and easy to administer. We believe that the instrument is useful for the detection of emotional distress in the family caregivers of hospitalised patients suffering from end-stage illnesses and receiving PC.
- terminal care
- supportive care
- psychological care
- hospice care
- clinical assessment
- family management
Data availability statement
All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Data availability statement
All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.
Supplementary materials
Supplementary Data
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Footnotes
Twitter @JTLimonero
Contributors JTL, JM-M, DM and MJG-R designed the study. JM-M, DM, MJG-R, MB, ML-P, AS, SV and CS-J collected data. JTL, JM-M, RB and JT-S analysed data. JTL, JM-M, JG-B and XG-B interpreted results. JTL, JM-M and JG-B wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
Funding This research was carried out, thanks in part to grant PSI2017-85134-R from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO).
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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