The influence of the cardiac surgery patient's sex and age on care-giving received.

Care-giving research has predominantly focused on the care-givers of those with long-term illness and the elderly. Little attention has been given to examining care-giving from the perspective of the person receiving the care, differentiating how the sex or age of the person may influence the care received, or examining care-giving in the context of shorter term situations where the patient is expected to recover. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of the informal care-givers of cardiac surgery patients from three hospitals in one Canadian province and the effect of patient characteristics (sex, age) on their experience of receiving that care. A prospective, non-randomized design, was used to examine the short-term recovery from cardiac surgery of 120 subjects (60 men, 60 women). Patients were interviewed preoperatively and then at monthly intervals through the third postoperative month. The findings from this study suggest that the patterns of informal care-giving noted in the chronic care literature are also present in the short-term care of post-surgical cardiac patients. The burden of care-giving continues to rest predominantly on women. Female patients relied on their spouses for help less frequently than did male patients and their care-givers were more frequently employed outside the home and in lower status jobs than were the care-givers of male patients. 30% of care-givers were reported to have a health problem of their own to manage while caring for the recovering patient. Patients who were male or who were < 65 years of age had higher social support scores than did patients who were female or who were > or = 65 years of age. These findings suggest that the cardiac patient's sex affects the availability of home-based care. In addition, care-givers may themselves be patients in need of care. Further research is needed to examine the receipt of home-based care-giving, particularly for female patients.