The chaos of caregiving and hope

Abstract

Hope is an important psychosocial resource that has been found to support family caregivers. In order to further understand the challenges of caregivers and their hope experience, we analyzed, using Cortazzi's (2001) narrative analysis approach, 101 journal entries of family caregivers of persons with advanced cancer. The data was condensed into poetic phrases to reflect structural categories outlined by Cortazzi of event, description and evaluation resulting in a poetic narrative entitled 'The Chaos of Caregiving and Hope'. Each stanza of the poetic narrative describes the day-to-day experiences of the participants' chaos and hope. We believe that looking at the caregiving experience through poetic presentation provided new insights into the lives of caregivers caring for terminally ill cancer patients. These insights are related to the intensity of the chaos, and how hope is present in their daily lives.

Caring for Aging Parents: The Influence of Family Coping, Spirituality/Religiosity, and Hope on the Marital Satisfaction of Family Caregivers

“…Therapists can encourage their spiritual and religious clients to engage in various spiritual disciplines (e.g., prayer, meditation, scripture reading). Duggleby et al (2012) recommends that therapists allow their caregiving clients to reminisce and tell stories, as doing so seems to foster hope in their situations. Similarly, narrative therapy (White, 2007) seems to be a promising approach to treating family caregivers, as it can help clients realize they do not have to be defined by their problems.…”

“…Although family caregivers tend to say that being Downloaded by [New York University] at 00:20 13 June 2015 hopeful helps them cope with the negative aspects of the caregiving role (Duggleby et al, 2012), results from this study did not find a relationship between hope and the marital satisfaction of adult children who provide care for their aging parents. This study's findings are inconsistent with past researchers who have noted that a sense of hope seems to increase positive outcomes for recovering from adverse situations (McCubbin et al, 1997;Walsh, 2012a), like caregiving.…”

“…One qualitative analysis revealed that caregivers felt Downloaded by [New York University] at 00:20 13 June 2015 hopeful when they were able to reminisce, share stories, and write about their experiences (Duggleby, Williams, Holtslander, Cunningham, & Wright, 2012).…”

Why we need more poetry in palliative care

“…As well as providing solace to caregivers one narrative analysis study has shown how it may be possible by synthesising caregivers’ journal entries to create poems that give insight into the sense of chaos, anxiety and hope they experience. 43 …”

Understanding Other-Oriented Hope

“…In response to the open-ended question, What are you hoping for?, 18 of the spouses verbalized instances of vicarious hope, such as hoping that the patient's life would return to normal, hoping that the patient would live a long life, and hoping that the patient would adjust to lifestyle changes and experience little suffering. Duggleby et al (2011) identified examples of other-oriented hope among the directed written journal entries of 10 family caregivers of those with cancer. Qualitative examples of other-oriented hope emerging in the study included, "Hope?…”