Background: In the process of cancer treatment, mothers of children with cancer experience burden of care as a result of these conditions. Early detection of burden of care has an important role in promoting health care. The aim of this study was to evaluate burden of care in mothers of children with a malignancy.
Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study was done on 70 mothers of children with cancer in Oncology Department of Shahid Sadoughi Hospital, Yazd, Iran, during December 2015-March 2016. The required data were collected demographic information and burden of care questionnaire. Statistical analysis was performed using T-test, ANOVA, Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficient.
Results: In this study, the mean age of mothers and children was 47.5 ± 8.54 and 5.3 ± 3.2 years old, respectively. Moreover, 12.9٪of mothers had low burden of care and 71.4٪ and 15.7٪of them experienced moderate to severe burden of care, respectively. An inverse relation (R=-0.322)was found between emotional burden of care and education as well as age of mothers(p<0.05).There was significant difference between burden of care in mothers who received aid from government institutions and those who didn’t receive help from state institutions(p<0.05).Moreover, significant difference was seen between burden of care in mothers with special disease and mothers without special disease, and between mothers whose children had surgery and
those didn’t have surgery. Moreover, burden of care was observed in mothers who take care of affected child lonely and mothers who were not alone (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The result of this study showed that the majority of mothers of children with a malignancy had moderate to severe burden of care. Therefore, effective interventions are recommended to medical team members to reduce burden of care in mothers