Family caregiver's experiences of providing care to patients with End-Stage Renal Disease in South-West Nigeria

Aims and objectives: To describe the experiences of family caregivers providing care for patients living with End-Stage Renal Disease in Nigeria BACKGROUND: Family caregiving is where an unpaid volunteer, usually a close family member, attends to the needs of a loved one with a chronic, disabling illness within the home. Much research has been conducted in the area of family caregiving in high-income countries. However, the same cannot be said for many of the low-resource, multicultural African countries.

Design: Qualitative descriptive study.

Method: This qualitative descriptive study used manifest content analysis to analyse data from semi-structured, individual interviews, with 15 purposively selected family caregivers. Two tertiary institutions providing renal care in South-Western Nigeria: the research setting for this study.

Result: Five categories were identified, and these included disconnectedness with self and others, never-ending burden, 'a fool being tossed around', obligation to care and promoting a closer relationship.

Conclusion: Experiences associated with the caregiving of patients diagnosed with End-Stage Renal Disease evoked a number of emotions from the family caregivers, and the study revealed that caregiving imposed some burdens that are specific to low-resource countries on participants.

Relevance to clinical practice: Nurses need to engage family caregivers on disease-specific teachings that might promote understanding of the disease process and role expectation. Family caregivers may benefit from social support services.