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Project

Resilience in advanced cancer caregiving

Background

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity or trauma. It is a process that protects people against anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Resilience is a dynamic process that can be influenced by both intrinsic (person-related) and extrinsic (context-related) features. 

GPs who get insight into the different trajectories people tend to follow and the influence of the context on the resilient trajectories, are advantaged in detecting partners of patients with an incurable cancer (PICs) who are at risk for depression or anxiety at an early stage. They probably can influence the resilience trajectory from their position as a member of the context. 

Research questions

1. How is resilience expressed and how is resilience influenced in middle-aged partners of PICs?

2. How are the resilience trajectories of middle-aged partners of PICs influenced during and after the caregiving period?

3. How do partners of PICs experience the influence of their context on their resilience?

4. How do subsystems of the context of middle-aged partners of PICs behave and how do they influence the partners’ resilience?

Methodology

1.1. Systematic review of the literature with deductive data-analysis from the conceptual scheme of Bonanno. Narrative report.

1.2. Qualitative inquiry with semi-structured in-depth interviews with nine partners of patients who died because of cancer during the last year preceding the interviews. Thematic analysis of the data. Reporting according to the COREQ-32 criteria.

2. Longitudinal explorative study involving twenty middle-aged partners of PICs. Repeated semi-structured, in depth interviews (at baseline, at 3 months and every 6 months after diagnosis of incurable cancer and 6 months after death of the PIC). Deductive analysis of the data starting from the conceptual scheme of Bonanno followed by an inductive data-analysis.
Reporting according to the COREQ-32 criteria.

3. Qualitative study involving ten middle-aged partners of PICS and for each partner four significant people from their context. Semi-structured in-depth interviews at 6 months after the patient being diagnosed with an incurable cancer and 6 months after the patient’s death. Framework analysis of the data and reporting according the COREQ-32 criteria.

Date:1 Oct 2018 →  Today
Keywords:Palliative care, Resilience, Caregiver, Cancer care
Disciplines:Education curriculum, Public health care, Public health sciences
Project type:PhD project