Influence of family caregiver caring behavior on COPD patients' self-care behavior in Taiwan

COPD becomes a long-term burden on family members who serve as day-to-day caregivers, and causes healthcare systems to incur substantial costs. COPD is both preventable and treatable, and one important aspect of COPD treatment is patients' self-management. This study aimed to investigate relationships between self-management and the caregiver burden, and the influence of family caregivers' caring behavior on COPD patients' self-care behavior.

In a cross-sectional study conducted between March 2007 and January 2008, 192 pairs of COPD patients (age > 40 years, normal cognitive function) and their primary family caregivers were recruited to answer questionnaires measuring COPD characteristics and COPD knowledge (patients and caregivers); functional status, health beliefs, self-efficacy, and self-care (patients); and caring behavior and caregiver response (family members). All questionnaires were shown to have acceptable validity and reliability, and the data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate techniques.

Patients' ages, scores in health belief, self-efficacy and disease-related knowledge were shown to correlate with patients' self-care behavior. Patients' self-care behavior was negatively correlated with family caregivers' caring behavior (ρ = -0.21, P = .003), but positively with caring duration of family caregiver caring behavior (ρ = 0.15, P = .037). Patients with a spouse as caregiver exhibited higher self-care ability than patients not married to their caregivers (P = .038). However, patients' self-care behavior decreased with higher family caregivers' COPD knowledge (P = .041) and caring behavior (P = .01), and patients regularly taking medication exhibited low self-care scores.

Family caregivers' caring behavior had a partial negative effect on COPD patients' self-care behavior.