Quality of life and perceived overload by family caregivers of patients with chronic renal failure, Cartagena (Colombia).

Calidad de vida y sobrecarga percibida por cuidadores familiares de pacientes con enfermedad renal crónica, Cartagena (Colombia)

Objective: to determine the quality of life and the overload perceived by the family caregiver of the patient with chronic renal failure in Cartagena. Materials and methods: a descriptive study involving 135 family caregivers of patients with CRF who are in the process of hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis in Cartagena, to assess the quality of life the scale was applied: measurement of the quality of life of a family member who provides care a person, an instrument proposed by Ferrel et al (1997) and the overload scale of the caregiver of Zarit. The data were analyzed in the statistical package SPSS version 22®. Which were expressed in averages, absolute and relative frequencies. Results: the majority of the participants were women, who dedicate 7 to 12 hours to patient care and have been caregivers for more than 37 months. In the caregivers the physical, social and spiritual well-being presented low alteration, with means of 8,4, 14,8 and 16,1 respectively, the average of the psychological well-being was in 28,1, with a standard deviation of 6.1 indicating a negative perception, which suggests a high affectation . Regarding overload, 39,3% of the caregivers said they had a light overload and 25,2% heavy overload. Conclusion: caregivers were identified with high affectation of the psychological well-being and low affectation of the physical, social and spiritual well-being, indispensable elements for the development of the individual. They perceived presence of slight overload in the experience of caring.