Family caregiving skill: Development of the concept

Families increasingly are expected to provide complex care at home to ill r elatives. Such-care requires a level of caregiving knowledge and skill unpr ecedented among lay persons, yet family caregiving skill has never been for mally developed as a concept in nursing. The purpose of the study reported here was to develop the concept of family caregiving skill systematically t hrough qualitative analysis of interviews with patients (n = 30) receiving chemotherapy for cancer and their primary family caregivers (n = 29). Open coding and constant comparison constituted the analytic methods. Sixty-thre e indicators of caregiving skill were identified for nine core caregiving p rocesses. Family caregiving skill was defined as the ability to engage effe ctively and smoothly in these nine processes. Properties of family caregivi ng skill also were identified. Conceptualizing skill as a variable and iden tifying indicators of varying levels of skill provides a basis for measurem ent and will allow clinicians to more precisely assess family caregiving sk ill. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons.