End-of-life caregiving: what helps family caregivers cope?

Patient care needs and patient quality-of-life (QOL) deficits can be significant stressors for family caregivers. Often, greater caregiving demands and poorer patient QOL are associated with greater caregiver strain. However, caregiver coping behavior can attenuate the effect of caregiving stressors on caregiver strain.

Doctors' emotional reactions to recent death of a patient: cross sectional study of hospital doctors.

Objectives: To describe doctors' emotional reactions to the recent death of an "average" patient and to explore the effects of level of training on doctors' reactions.

Design: Cross sectional study using quantitative and qualitative data.

Setting: Two academic teaching hospitals in the United States.

Factors associated with the accuracy of family caregiver estimates of patient pain.

This study identified factors associated with inaccurate family caregiver assessments of patient pain. Participants were 31 caregiver-patient dyads receiving hospice home care. All patients had a primary diagnosis of end-stage cancer.