Caring about patients and their families is something that Linda Scott takes very much to heart. The Grand Valley State University Nursing professor was selected as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Scholar for her research on home care for people with terminal heart failure.
NIH, one of the world's foremost medical research centers, supports research by non-federal scientists in universities, medical schools, hospitals, and research institutions throughout the country and abroad. The NIH seeks to acquire new knowledge to help prevent, detect, diagnose, and treat disease and disability, from the rarest genetic disorder to the common cold.
The goal of Scott's investigation is to further explain how terminal heart failure patients and their caregivers feel about home care, as opposed to hospitalization.
Continued research in the area will contribute to nursing science to maximize the caregiving experience for caregivers, care recipients, and their families, explains Scott.
Scott's study found that providing care for people with terminal heart failure was a complex process for both the caregiver and family of the patient.
Heart failure is a resource intensive condition, explains Scott. Often it is more cost effective to send the patient home early. We often don't consider the impact on family members who have to assume the responsibility for providing care.
Scott's research abstract was one of 40 selected by NIH to develop into a grant proposal.
Her study found that higher caregiver self-esteem and mental health had a positive effect on the health-related quality of life of caregivers, yet higher caregiver self-esteem had an adverse effect on the quality of life of their care recipients.
In Scott's study, the majority of caregivers was women and a large percentage of the patients receiving care were men.
As caregivers felt better about providing care to their loved ones, their care recipients felt more powerlessness and dependency, ultimately decreasing their quality of life, explains Scott. The role reversal made patients feel as though they could no longer take care of their families or themselves.
