Determinants of the quality of life of informal carers of palliative patients

Introduction
To assess the quality of life conditions for informal carers of palliative patients.

Material and methods
The study included 150 caregivers of patients under palliative treatment. The research was conducted at the Good Samaritan Hospice in Lublin and in the home hospice. The research tool was the Questionnaire for Assessing the Quality of Life of Carers of Cancer Patients (CQOL-C) and the Patient Health Questionnaire (TEST PHQ-9) used to assess the occurrence of depression symptoms. The author’s self-administered questionnaire containing socio-demographic data was also used.

Results
The vast majority of the respondents were women 61.33%. The average age of the carers was 51.3 ± 12.0 and the average quality of life 63.17. In the domain of the economic situation it was 4.29, in the domain of psychosomatic functioning 28.41, in the domain of adaptation to illness of a family member 30.47. The average level of depression among the respondents based on the PHQ-9 test was 7.59 ± 5.43. Study has shown that 38% of carers were depressed, 27.33% had mild depression, 22.67% had moderate depression, 9.33% had moderate depression, and 2.67% had severe depression degree.

Conclusions
The quality of life of carers of palliative patients is low. The risk of depression among caregivers of palliative patients is high. The higher the level of the depression, the worse the quality of life in general and in all its domains. The lower level of the quality of life concerned more often men, carers between 46–59 years of age, people with higher education, carers who are distant families and professionally active people.