Evaluation of psycho-social situations of relatives of cancer patients: A case of Palliative Care Center of Eyüpsultan State Hospital

The cancer, one of the most common and fearful diseases in our era, is not only an illness, it is also a reflection of the changing life style. The cancer causes a lot of psychosocial problems for both patients and their relatives and has an impact on the quality of life significantly. The palliative care that quite new in terms of implementation in our country is a holistic care for terminal period patients. Palliative care, is not only for the patients, it also evaluates problems of patients' relatives by tackling them multidimensionally and tries to solve them. The aim of this study is measuring the depression levels, perceived social support and the quality of life of relatives of terminal period patients who are in the Palliative Care Center of Eyupsultan State Hospital and investigating the relationship between the sociodemographic variables and them. In this context, the sample group is 30 patients relatives, 23 women and 7 men, who get caring service in February/March 2019. The data collection tools of the study are ''Interview Form'', ''Multidimensional Perceived Social Support Scale'', ''The Caregiver Quality of Life Index Cancer Scale (CQOLC-)'', ''Beck Depression Scale (BDS)''. Scales are entered to the SPSS, and are evaluated by SPSS Statistics 21 Programme. The tests used in evaluation of data are Whitney U test, Pearson test, Kruskal Wallis test, Spearman Rho correlation and lineer regression model is established. The results are detected that women are more interested in caring, percentage of 56.7 of participants showed depression symptomatology, there is a significant relationship between educational status and Beck Depression Scale, and the level of depression increases as the level of education decreases by using Mann-Whitney U test. The relationship between the quality of life subscales of patients' relatives and sociodemographic properties are examined by Spearman correlation and it is detected that the economical conditions get worse as the points of the quality of life decrease. The correlation between the educational status and life points is positive and however in this position that they experience health problems in fulfilling the responsibility of care, the quality of life is affected negatively.