Ayfer Ekim, Ayse Ferda Ocakci
Background: As delivering care is an inherent part of becoming parents, providing high level care to the child with health problems might be a burden for the caregivers by affecting their physical and mental health. The best way to understand the negative effects of caring process of the children with a chronic disease like asthma is to inquire caregiver burden.
Aim: This review aimed to analyze the effects of caregiver burden of parents who are primarily responsible for the caring of children with asthma.
Methods: PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Ovid, Cochrane Library and the Web of Science databases were searched for the studies published between 2000-2015. Key search terms used were “caregiver”, “caregiving”, “burden”, “pediatric asthma”, “parent”. The quality evaluation of the studies were performed by independent reviewer utilizing Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklists’.
Results: Twenty two studies in total were scanned for this reviewed and 81.0% of them had a descriptive design. In 82.3% of them quality of life were measured in order to assess the caregiver burden outcomes. Other measurements to assess the caregiver burden were loss of work day, stress level and asthma management practices.
Conclusion: It is absolutely crucial to determine caregiver burden risks and protective factors since wellness level of caregivers affect the asthma management practices. This review is to emphasise the lack of interventional study results about negative effects of caregiver burden and the factors influencing the burden at childhood asthma even if some studies on caregiver burden and related factors exist. For future studies, researchers should focus on testing some interventions lessening the burden of caregivers and increasing their life-qualities.
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