Readiness for Hospital Discharge in Primary Caregivers for Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Background: Readiness for hospital discharge is essential to the treatment and rehabilitation. But until now, little is known about the existing status and affecting factors of readiness for hospital discharge in primary caregivers for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in China. Methods: A cross-sectional study of 253 leukemia patients including their family members from Nov 2016 to Aug 2017 was performed by convenience sampling and questionnaire survey. Results: The total score of readiness of primary caregivers is 157.36. Factors including periods of chemotherapy ( P <0.001), complications ( P =0.019), family economic situation ( P =0.023), understanding of leukemia ( P <0.001), objective supports ( P =0.004), subjective supports ( P <0.001), and availability of support ( P =0.045) are main influences. Conclusions: 1. The readiness for hospital discharge in primary caregivers for childhood lymphoblastic leukemia patients is in an intermediate level, indicate that more efforts should be done in improving present situation, especially on the social support which got the lowest scores.2. In induction remission period of chemotherapy，with complications，with poorer family economic state，lacking knowledge about leukemia and with poor social support are possible factors leading to lower score in readiness for hospital discharge scale, which indicate that providing high quality family and primary caregiver assessment and discharge education throughout the hospitalization is the key to improve the readiness in nursing aspect.