A critical review of instruments used to assess emotional, physical and social aspects of caregiver of terminal cancer patients

Abstract

Nowadays a lot of people are living longer and than, taking care of patient with chronic disease is an important aspect of public health problem. Taking care of patient in the terminally ill cancer phase is considered a complex, difficult, anxiously and not well studied. The vast majority of papers evaluate family after death, however the informal caregiver can present a lot of emotional, physical and social changes, principally in the period just before patient death, and the measurement of these symptoms are necessary. Many well-studied instruments tools are available in the literature; however, the great majority of them seam to be incomplete regarding all dimension of care during terminal phase (physical, psychological, social, economical needs, hopes, spiritual and existential believes). In this review study some of the more important standard instruments tested for caregivers terminal cancer patients are analyzed and the application of an instrument still not validated in Brazil is suggested. This instrument, the General Comfort Questionnaire (GCQ) offers the possibility to make a multidimensional evaluation of caregivers for terminal cancer phase patients.