title: Providing informal home care for pressure ulcer patients: how it affects carers' quality of life and burden.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the quality of life of informal caregivers of patients with pressure ulcer; to assess their levels of burden; to analyse the variables influencing both their quality of life and burden.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Informal caregivers of pressure ulcer patients, besides coping with the natural dependency of these patients, deal with the specificity of caring these types of wounds. This situation has an impact on not only the quality of life and burden felt by informal caregivers but also on individual and familiar dynamics.
  
  
  METHODS
  Descriptive and correlational study.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study focused on 145 informal caregivers providing home care. Measurement instruments were: SF-36v2 and the Burden Interview Scale. Descriptive analysis of the quantitative variables was carried out according to measures of central tendency, and the qualitative variables were described using absolute and relative frequencies. The relationships or associations between variables were explored through correlational analysis and, whenever the data allowed, multivariate techniques were used.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Informal caregivers showed low levels of quality of life and, most of them, significant burden. Quality of life decreased with overload, with the increasing number of pressure ulcer and with less experience of informal caregivers, with lack of financial remuneration, with unemployment, with patient positioning and with the direct care of the wound. The burden increased with the number of pressure ulcer in each patient and with the lack of financial remuneration.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These informal caregivers have low quality of life and are overburdened. Both situations are positively and negatively influenced by factors related to the pressure ulcer and to the patients' sociodemographic data.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results of this study allow more effective monitoring by health professionals of levels of burden and quality of life encountered in pressure ulcer informal caregivers, as well as direct interventions to inhibit the factors inducing burden and enhance those that improve quality of life.
authors: School of Health, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal. rodriguesalexandr@gmail.com.|CEISUC - Centre for Health Studies and Research of the University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal. rodriguesalexandr@gmail.com.
authors: Alexandre M
authors: AM
authors: Rodrigues
authors: CEISUC - Centre for Health Studies and Research of the University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.|Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
authors: Pedro L
authors: PL
authors: Ferreira
authors: Nursing Department, University of Roviri i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.
authors: Carmen
authors: C
authors: Ferré-Grau
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D017281:Cost of Illness; D005260:Female; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D005791:Patient Care; D003668:Pressure Ulcer / Q000451:nursing / Q000628:therapy*; D011788:Quality of Life; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: caregiver burden; carer; pressure ulcer; quality of life