The Relationship Between Care Burden and Psychological Resilience of Caregivers of Elderly Surgical Patients: A Descriptive Study

Background: The care burden on caregivers of elderly surgical patients causes physical, psychological, economic, and social problems arising from the care undertaken by the caregiver. The level of psychological resilience is important in coping with these problems.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between care burden and the psychological resilience status of caregivers of elderly surgical patients.

Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with caregivers of elderly surgical patients in the surgical clinics of educational research and a state hospital. The study was completed with 151 caregivers representing the population. The data were collected using the Patient Descriptive Characteristics Form, Caregiver Descriptive Characteristics Form, the ZARIT Care Burden Scale adapted to the clinic, and the Brief Psychological Resilience Scale. Statistical analyses were conducted using the Student T-test, the One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test for comparing scale score averages between groups, and Pearson Correlation tests for examining the relationship between variables.

Results: It was found that 52.3% of the patients in the study sample were male, 96.7% were married, and 15.9% were secondary school graduates. The study determined that the mean Care Burden Scale score of the caregivers of elderly surgical patients was 31.53 ± 8.94 at a mild level, and the mean score of Psychological Resilience was 17.29 ± 3.35 at a moderate level. The correlation analysis between the scales found a negative, weak relationship between care burden and psychological resilience, which was statistically significant (P < 0.01) (r=-0.34).

Conclusion: It was observed that the psychological resilience levels of caregivers decreased as the care burden increased and that the psychological resilience levels decreased as the caregiving time per hour per day increased. New studies can be conducted to investigate whether interventions aimed at reducing the care burden are effective in increasing psychological resilience levels.