This descriptive study aimed to explore the stress situation, stress level, coping, social support, and quality of life in family caregivers of persons with cancer receiving radiotherapy. The Stress, Appraisal, and Coping theory (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) was used to guide this study. Sixty-five family caregivers of persons with cancer receiving radiotherapy at Songklanagarind hospital in Thailand were purposively recruited. Data were collected in a fifteen-month period from September 2004 to November 2005. Instruments for screening and collecting data were a demographic questionnaire, semi-structured interviewing questions, the Jalowiec Coping Scale (JCS), Social Support Questionnaire, and Quality of Life Index. The qualitative data were analyzed by using content analysis, while the quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient. The results showed that the mean scores for the family caregivers’ stress were at a moderate to high level. Two types of stress situations were stress situations related to direct cares for the persons with cancer, and stress situations related to the impacts of caregiving on the family caregivers’ life. The family caregivers combined all of three coping subscales which were confrontive, emotive, and palliative coping strategies. Confrontive coping was most used to deal with the stress. As a whole, the biggest source of support the family caregivers received was from their family members in the forms of emotional support, and service and tangible support. Informational support was mostly provided by health care professionals. The caregivers perceived a fairly good level of quality of life. There was no correlation of the stress level, coping, social support, to quality of life of the family caregivers. This study provides guidelines for nurses as key persons to assess stress of family caregivers and help them find proper ways of coping by giving them clear, appropriate information and emotional support.

MASTER OF NURSING SCIENCE PROGRAMME IN ADULT NURSING มหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล ปี 2549

of, Family, Cancer, Quality, life, ", CAREGIVER, COPING, RADIAOTHERAPY