LAUSR

Cancer burden continues to rise globally and locally. Due to the shift of the cancer care from the hospital to the community, many cancer patients requiring needs in palliative care from their informal caregivers. Many caregivers often taking up the important roles and responsibilities but their own needs are largely neglected, and hence may induce caregiving burden. This study aims to explore the relationships of caregiving burden with unmet support needs in both cancer patients and their caregivers. A convenience sample of 280 patient-caregiver dyads was recruited from the oncology outpatient clinic of two hospitals in Hong Kong between April and June 2018. Among them, 258 (92.1%) patient-caregiver dyads provided complete information on unmet supportive care needs (Patient: the 34-item SCNS-SF34-C, Caregivers: the 26-item SPUNS-SF), and caregiving burden (Caregiver Strain Index). Among the patients, their mean age was 60.8 (SD = 13.6) and 66% were female. Among the caregivers, their mean age was 49.3 (SD = 14.6), 67.2% were female, and 38.2% were children of the patient. Mean level caregiving burden in caregivers was 4.87 (SD = 3.75) out of a range 0–13. Regression analysis showed that higher caregiving burden was associated significantly with higher caregiver’s unmet support in personal and emotional needs (βstd = 0.348) and future concerns (βstd = 0.204), and patient’s unmet support in physical and daily living needs (βstd = 0.201), but lower caregiver’s unmet support in information needs (βstd = −0.233) after controlling for age, gender, and education level of both patients and caregivers. The findings shed lights in designing interventions aim at reducing caregiving burden by targeting caregiver’s unmet support in personal and emotional need and those caregivers are taking care of cancer patients with unmet support in physical and daily living needs. However, the finding on caregiver’s unmet support in information needs was a protective factor of caregiving burden warrants further exploration.