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Aims and objectives
To explore the relationship between personality traits, caring characteristics and abuse tendency among professional caregivers of older people with dementia in long‐term care facilities in China.
Background
Elder abuse is a serious global health problem and human right violation with high incidence among older people with dementia. There are many investigations about impact factors of risk of abuse among family caregivers of older people with dementia. However, in long‐term care facilities, the situation of abuse tendency needs further investigation.
Design
Cross‐sectional study.
Methods
An observational survey was conducted according to the STROBE checklist. We investigated 156 professional caregivers of older people with dementia in three long‐term care facilities in Guangzhou, China. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Caregiver Abuse Screen (CASE) and the Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Five‐Factor Inventory (NEO‐FFI). Data were analysed using Mann–Whitney U tests, Kruskal–Wallis tests, Spearman's rank correlation and logistic regression analyses.
Results
Over half of the participants (51.9%) reported abuse tendency to the older people with dementia. There was a significant negative correlation between the caregivers' agreeableness scores of NEO‐FFI and their CASE scores. Multivariate logistic regression analyses highlighted that protective factors of abuse tendency were caregivers' agreeableness, care recipients' source of finances and their duration of dementia while higher care difficulty and presence of older people's behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) were the risk factors.
Conclusion
Caregivers' agreeableness personality trait and the caring characteristics of older people with dementia may be relevant to abuse tendency in long‐term care facilities. Further study with a larger sample size is needed to validate such a correlation.
Relevance to clinical practice
Older people with dementia are at high risk for abuse. Prospective caregivers could pay more attention to developing their own agreeableness. The managers might establish monitoring system for reducing the abuse.
Objective
To evaluate the psychometric properties of a modified Chinese version of the Symptom Distress Scale (SDS), to explore symptom distress and its association with mood disturbance and factors that related to levels of symptom distress and mood disturbance.
Methods
A cross‐sectional, correlation design was adopted. A convenience sample of 190 nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients was recruited from a Cancer Center in Guangzhou, China, with 169 patients completing the study.
Results
The psychometric properties of the modified SDS were satisfactory (Cronbach's α = 0.80) with test–retest reliability (correlation coefficient = 0.71). Education, marital status, disease stage and SDS scores were significant influencing factors of mood disturbance. The overall symptom distress level of NPC patients was higher than that of other cancer groups, with dry mouth being the most distressing symptom. Symptom distress level was influenced by age, marital status, disease stage, treatment modality and number of radiotherapy (RT) sessions.
Conclusion
More pain and symptom management care should be focused on patients who are older, single or divorced patients, those with late‐stage disease, and those subjected to multimodality therapy. Symptom distress was the most significant influencing factor of NPC patients’ mood status.
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