Chronic sorrow in next of kin of patients with multiple sclerosis

Breaking Up and a New Beginning When One's Partner Goes into a Nursing Home: An Interview Study

In aging societies worldwide, spouses take on great responsibility for care when their partner continues to live at home. Nursing home placement occurs when the partner becomes too frail due to multimorbidity, and this will cause a change in the spouse’s life. This study aimed to explore the spouse’s experience of their partner’s move to a nursing home. Two interviews were conducted at 9-month intervals within the project entitled “Implementation of Knowledge-Based Palliative Care in Nursing Homes”. Thirteen spouses from both urban and rural areas were included, with an age-range of 60–86 years (median 72). Qualitative content analysis was performed. The main findings were captured in two themes: Breaking up of close coexistence and Towards a new form of daily life. The first encompassed processing loneliness, separation and grief, exhaustion, increased burden, and a sense of guilt. The second encompassed a sense of freedom, relief, acceptance, support and comfort. Professionals in both home care and nursing home care need to develop and provide a support programme conveying knowledge of the transition process to prevent poor quality of life and depression among the spouses. Such a programme should be adaptable to individual needs and should ideally be drawn up in consultation with both partners.

FAWCETT ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION MODEL APPLIED TO THE THEORY OF CHRONIC SORROW

ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the Theory of Chronic Sorrow, following the model of analysis and evaluation of Nursing theories proposed by Jacqueline Fawcett. Method: a reflective study, developed through the investigation of the Theory of Chronic Sorrow and its application in the nursing practice. The sample consisted of eighteen studies that used the theory as a reference. A Model for Analysis and Evaluation of Nursing Theories was used, which involved, in the first stage, a detailed examination of the referred theory in terms of scope, context and content. In the second stage - evaluation - the criteria of clarity, significance, internal consistency, parsimony, testability, empirical adequacy and pragmatic adequacy were used. Result: This is a mid-range theory that is predictive in relation to the scope. As for the context, it is based on the stress and adaptation model. The content presents well-defined and interrelated concepts. The concepts of meta-paradigm have significance, internal consistency and are operable. It features a usable instrument: The Chronic Sorrow Questionnaire, reliable as a tracking tool to detect the presence of chronic sorrow. The theory is parsimonious, it can be used with chronic diseases and directed to people in the final phase of life and their family caregivers. Conclusion: this study may contribute to indicate the use of the Theory of Chronic Sorrow and support nursing care in promoting effective strategies and, consequently, improve the comfort of patients and their families in coping with chronic sorrow.

The chronic sorrow experiences of caregivers of clients with schizophrenia in Taiwan: A phenomenological study

PURPOSE

The aim of the article is to explore the chronic sorrow experiences of the caregivers of clients with schizophrenia in Taiwan.

DESIGN AND METHODS

Descriptive, phenomenological, and purposive sampling and one-to-one, in-depth, and unstructured interviews were used. Data saturation was achieved after interviewing 12 participants. Narratives were analyzed using Colaizzi's (1978) method.

FINDINGS

Three themes and eight subthemes emerged, including encountering sorrow (disordered life, disintegrated self-esteem, little prospect for hope, and collapsed sense of security), talking with sorrow (cognitive change and transformation of action), and living with sorrow (living with defects and living with responsibilities).

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Advanced practice psychiatric nurses should take the emotional stability of caregivers into consideration. Caregivers should be encouraged and taught effective culture-oriented strategies for living with sorrow.

Health-related quality of life in partners of persons with MS: a longitudinal 10-year perspective

OBJECTIVES

Multiple sclerosis (MS) impacts the health-related quality of life (HRQL) in partners, but knowledge on the longitudinal perspective is needed. The aim was to analyse HRQL in partners of persons with MS living in Sweden a decade ago and after 10 years.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Partners were identified through a population-based study of persons with MS in Stockholm. Information on HRQL (the Sickness Impact profile), personal factors and disease-specific factors, and measures of functioning of persons with MS was collected at both time points mainly by home visits.

RESULTS

Some 64 of 102 identified partners (63%) agreed to participate at baseline, and at 10 years 40 of 54 eligible partners were included (74%). HRQL in partners was worse than in a Swedish, aged-grouped reference population at both baseline and follow-up. Depressive symptoms in persons with MS were independently associated with worse HRQL in partners.

CONCLUSIONS

Depressive symptoms in persons with MS were associated with worse HRQL in their partners, and HRQL of partners was continuously impacted in the longitudinal perspective. This knowledge needs to be accounted for in the planning of MS care, together with the development of evidence-based support for depressive symptoms, and engagement in recreational life in both partners and persons with MS.

Family members' experiences of personal assistance given to a relative with disabilities

Personal assistance is a type of home care common to many countries even though entitlement and legislative framework may vary from country to country. At present, there exists no knowledge about the family members' experiences of such assistance; therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate family members' experiences of personal assistance given to a relative of working age with a functional disability. Twenty-five family members who had a relative with a severe neurological disease in Sweden were interviewed about the significance of personal assistance, and the qualitative interviews were subjected to qualitative latent content analysis. The overall findings verify the close connection between the family members' experiences and their perception of the quality of the caring relationship between the personal assistant and the person with disability. The main finding was an appreciation of the personal assistance on the part of the family members. However, in situations where the encounter between the assistant and the relative with disability was perceived negatively, the family members experienced great anxiety. The shortcomings were the inability to maintain a private life with assistance and the limitation of choice because of the shortage of personal assistants. Beyond these general findings, this study found that personal assistance was experienced by the family members in terms of dignity and empowering care. This theme was generated from seven subthemes: Insight into private life, Security through the close relation, Social life through freedom of movement, Influence over the organisation of assistance, Self-determination and understanding, Friendship and mutual respect and Adaption to the dependency on assistance. The findings indicate that responsible officials, work leaders and assistants need constantly to improve the implementation of the law. In such efforts, the experiences of family members described in this study are a source of knowledge.