Psychometric properties of the caregiver contribution to self-care of oral anticancer agents index: Longitudinal study

Background: The use of oral anticancer agents (OAAs) has increased in recent decades. Despite the advantages of OAAs, people with cancer face challenges such as adherence, prevention, recognition, and management of OAA side effects. Informal caregivers can help their patients who take OAAs by facing the above challenges with the implementation of behaviours to maintain stability (Caregiver contribution to self-care maintenance), monitoring (Caregiver contribution to self-care monitoring) and managing (Caregiver contribution to self-care management) the conditions of their patients. Objective: To develop and test the psychometric properties of the Caregiver Contribution to self-care in the Oral Anticancer Agents Index (CC-SCOAAI). Methods: A longitudinal study was conducted. Factorial validity was tested using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). Furthermore, we also tested the internal consistency and validity of the CC-SCOAAI construct. The MannWhitney U test was used to demonstrate associations between CC-SCOAAI scores and patient's rehospitalizations, emergency-room attendances, and mortality. Results: We enrolled 318 caregivers, mostly female (63.52 %), with an age of <44 (39.94 %) and spouse of the patient (54.66 %). The CFA demonstrated the factorial validity of the CC-SCOAAI. Caregivers of patients with more re-hospitalizations had a lower contribution to self-care maintenance (U = 2933.500; p = .04), while caregivers of patients with more emergency room admissions (U = 1392.500; p < .001) and re-hospitalizations (U = 2385.500; p < .001) had a lower contribution to self-care management. Caregivers of patients with emergency-room admissions (U = 1392.500; p = .005), re-hospitalisations (U = 2322.500; p < .001) and mortality (U = 515.500; p = .001) had lower contribution to self-care monitoring. Conclusions: CC-SCOAAI is a valid and reliable tool. Given that caregivers are crucial in supporting these patients, the CC-SCOAAI may help clinicians improve caregiver efficacy and researchers using CC-SCOAAI to determine better self-care outcomes in patients with OAA.