• Julie McDonald, Nadia Swami, Ashley Pope, Sarah Hales, Rinat Nissim, Gary Rodin, Breffni Hannon, and Camilla Zimmermann.
• 1 Department of Supportive Care, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada.
• Palliat Med. 2018 Jan 1; 32 (1): 69-78.

BackgroundEarly involvement of palliative care improves patient quality of life; however, quantitative studies have not yet demonstrated a similar effect for caregivers, for whom the construct of quality of life is less well developed.AimTo conceptualise quality of life of caregivers from their own perspective and to explore differences in themes between those who did or did not receive an early palliative care intervention.DesignQualitative grounded theory study.SettingTertiary comprehensive cancer centre.ParticipantsFollowing participation in a cluster-randomised trial of early palliative care, 23 caregivers (14 intervention and 9 control) of patients with advanced cancer participated in semi-structured interviews to discuss their quality of life.ResultsThe core category was 'living in the patient's world'. Five related themes were 'burden of illness and caregiving', 'assuming the caregiver role', 'renegotiating relationships', 'confronting mortality' and 'maintaining resilience'. There was thematic consistency between trial arms, except for the last two themes, which had distinct differences. Participants in the intervention group engaged in open discussion about the end of life, balanced hope with realism and had increased confidence from a range of professional supports. Controls tended to engage in 'deliberate ignorance' about the future, felt uncertain about how they would cope and lacked knowledge of available supports.ConclusionsCaregiver quality of life is influenced profoundly by the interaction with the patient and should be measured with specific questionnaires that include content related to confronting mortality and professional supports. This would improve delineation of quality of life for caregivers and allow greater sensitivity to change. Registration: clinicaltrials.gov NCT01248624.

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