Blood and Marrow Transplantation: Linking Caregiving and Recovery

Principal Investigator: Deborah Eldredge, PhD, RN
Co-Investigators: Marcia Grant, DNSc, RN, FAAN and Lillian M. Nail, PhD, RN, FAAN

Care partners of blood and marrow transplant (BMT) recipients have extensive responsibilities for patient well-being and safety. For this reason, systematic examination of the caregiving process and its relationship to BMT recipients' symptoms and resulting quality of life for both patients and care partners is a critical step in research. This project described BMT recipients' symptom disruption, functional level, and quality of life approximately 60 and 120 days following allogeneic BMT. In addition, relationships among care partners' ongoing caregiving activities and BMT recipients' symptoms and quality of life at the two time points were explored. Also, the relationships among BMT recipients' symptoms and quality of life as well as care partners' quality of life were examined. Study participants consisted of thirty pairs of allogeneic BMT recipients and their care partners from two regional transplant programs. The purposes of this project were to describe BMT recipients' symptoms and to study the relationship between caregiving processes, patients' symptoms, and quality of life. By addressing caregiving activities in the data collection, this study links caregiving processes to patient outcomes. This project fills gaps in knowledge and previous research by not only collecting data regarding the quality of life of both patients and care partners, but also by relating quality of life to patient symptoms.

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