School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
Int Nurs Rev. 2013 Jun;60(2):178-87. doi: 10.1111/inr.12000. Epub 2012 Nov 21.
The spouse is generally the primary informal caregiver for cancer patients. Many studies have explored the experience of caregiving for cancer patients, but it is unclear whether there are gender differences in the spousal caring experience for cancer patients.
This review describes the recent published research on the stress process of spousal caregiving experience for cancer patients, and aims to identify any gender differences in the caregiving experience.
Electronic, manual and author's searches were conducted. Articles included were published in English and Chinese, from January 2000 to March 2012. Study population is couples coping with cancer. Focus is on caregiving experience for spouse with cancer, and findings include both male and female spousal caregivers in quantitative studies. The databases searched included MEDLINE, CINAHL, Science Citation Index Expanded, Scopus, PsycINFO and the China Academic Journal Full-text Database. The key search terms used were 'cancer' or 'oncology' or 'carcinoma' AND 'caregiver' or 'caregiving' or 'carer' AND 'gender differences' or 'gender' AND 'spouse' or 'couple' or 'partner'. Spousal caregiving experiences of cancer patients were explored by adopting the 'stress process' of the Cancer Family Caregiving Experience Model from the gender perspective.
Twenty-five articles were identified and included in this review. It was revealed that female spousal caregivers perceived higher level negative experience in caregiving, such as lower mental health, lower physical health, poorer health-related quality of life, lower life satisfaction and decreased marital satisfaction than male spousal caregivers. However, female spousal caregivers are more likely to experience personal growth than male spousal caregivers.
This review identified that female spousal caregivers for cancer patients had higher levels of negative experience in caregiving. A better understanding of the spousal caregiving experience will provide healthcare professionals with the information needed to develop interventions to support and prepare spousal caregivers to care for their loved ones with cancer.
配偶通常是癌症患者的主要非正式照顾者。许多研究都探讨了癌症患者照顾者的体验，但尚不清楚配偶照顾癌症患者的体验是否存在性别差异。
本综述描述了最近发表的关于配偶照顾癌症患者的压力过程的研究，旨在确定照顾经验是否存在性别差异。
进行了电子、手动和作者检索。纳入的文章发表于 2000 年 1 月至 2012 年 3 月，以英文和中文发表。研究人群为应对癌症的夫妇。重点是配偶照顾癌症患者的体验，并且发现包括定量研究中的男性和女性配偶照顾者。检索的数据库包括 MEDLINE、CINAHL、科学引文索引扩展版、Scopus、PsycINFO 和中国学术期刊全文数据库。使用的主要检索词是“癌症”或“肿瘤学”或“癌”和“照顾者”或“照顾”或“照顾者”和“性别差异”或“性别”和“配偶”或“夫妻”或“伴侣”。从性别角度采用癌症家庭照顾体验模型的“压力过程”来探讨癌症患者配偶的照顾体验。
确定了 25 篇文章并纳入本综述。结果表明，与男性配偶照顾者相比，女性配偶照顾者在照顾方面的负面体验更高，如心理健康水平较低、身体健康状况较差、健康相关生活质量较差、生活满意度较低和婚姻满意度下降。然而，女性配偶照顾者比男性配偶照顾者更有可能经历个人成长。
本综述确定了女性癌症患者配偶在照顾方面的负面体验水平更高。更好地了解配偶照顾体验将为医疗保健专业人员提供支持配偶照顾者的干预措施所需的信息，并为他们准备照顾患有癌症的亲人提供信息。
