Abstract
Globally, cancer has a major impact on society, and the burden continues to grow by exerting physical, emotional, and financial strain on patients, families, societies, and healthcare systems. Cancer greatly affects not only patients, but also their families. Family caregivers are invisible to healthcare teams, but play an important role in the recovery of cancer patients. Cancer can worsen a family caregiver’s health, impair social life, increase anxiety, and cause depression. It is important to identify and deal with various domains affected by cancer to enhance the quality of life (QoL) of family caregivers. This is a prospective, observational, cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study, to assess the impact of cancer on the quality of life of family caregivers. The primary objective is to measure the effect of cancer diagnosis and its treatment on family caregivers’ quality of life using the CarGOQoL (CareGiver Oncology Quality of Life) questionnaire. The secondary objective is to determine the relationship between quality of life, socio-demographic variables, and cancer disease variables. Family caregivers who are associated with the care of cancer patients for at least two–three hours a day will be recruited in the study after signing the voluntary informed consent form. The CarGOQoL questionnaire will be used to record the responses from the participants. Domains such as psychological well-being, burden, relationship with healthcare, administration and finances, coping, physical well-being, self-esteem, leisure, social support, and private life will be recorded. Approximately 100 participants will be recruited for the study. Data analysis will be performed at the end of participant recruitment. Healthcare and social workers can enhance the quality of life of family caregivers by using the results of the CarGOQoL questionnaire, and better understand the different domains of QoL impacted by cancer.