Coping behaviour among family members of terminally Ill patients: a case study of Nnewt town in Anambra State

Abstract:

-This study focused on examination of inflences of coping bevaviours among family members of terminally ill patients in Nnewi with particular preference lu socio- cultural factors; gender, education, income place of patients social care and use social works services. A total of one tlunclrerl anci sixty two (-162) familymembersof terminally ill pgttents from eiyflteen years and above were used for the study.-1 iw clriestio~lrlaita~n d focus g r o ~ ~dpis c~~ssiotreic hniques were used for dataGOIICC~~DTIJh.e data collected with qrrestionnaire were analysed using frequency-1tnt~lesr 7nd ~~ercel~tagwehsil e tfie data from focus group discussion wereir~tepr refcd and r,?ported in a clr ralitative for-rn. The research hypotheses wereteslecl 1~si11Ig't e chi srlrrare (x7). TIIF! result obtainedstlowed that (1) femaleriernberso f the .-arnily of tern~inaifyil l patients were copying better than the male n e r r i l (~2~) ~TPse sti~tlyS L I P ~ OteIc i the view that the higher the level of educationc ~ af Ia~rrilytl le17ttxxo f tile terminally ill palient, the higher his coping ability. (3)I~~r;otwi~aes stlown to have a ~clalionsl~wipit h the coping behavio~rr. Thus , the11igI-ri nconie l l l ~ l ~ l boef rth~e family of the terminally ill tend to cope better than low incornr: me~l~bers(.4 ) It was seen that those who care for their terminally ill ~wtientsa t l ~ o n t~eend to have higher coping capacity than those who care for their palirnls ill tlie ilospitals. (5) The llypolheses which stated that family members oftcrrninallv ill patients who made use of tlie social workers services will cope betterll1c71i tliose ini.10 did not was r~pheltl. The result showed that the socio-culturalill r~ntier~ftas~ nilyil l Nnewi. It was also found that t&majority of the respondents~ 3 n1ot~ a3wa re of ttle existence of the s~dr;p~r, o f e s s i o n a nd what it can offerto the family at risk. Fina"y, the study exposeti some of the implications of thefin(lir~gfsu srxiai work profession in Nigeria and made some recommendations onlivw to rern~clytl rern.