Family resilience and its predictors among patients with a first-ever stroke one month after stroke: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Background

Understanding post-stroke family resilience would be helpful for healthcare professionals in planning interventions to facilitate family adaptation following stroke onset.

Objective

To investigate the level of family resilience and its predictors among patients with the first stroke.

Design

An explorative cross-sectional study.

Methods

The study was conducted on 288 first stroke patients recruited from 7 tertiary hospitals in China between July 2020 and October 2020, and they were followed up one month after stroke. Data were collected using the Medical Coping Modes Questionnaire, Self-efficacy for Managing Chronic Disease 6-item Scale, shortened Chinese version of Family Resilience Assessment Scale, and the Social Support Rating Scale. The predictive variables of family resilience were investigated using hierarchical regression analyses.

Results

A total of 255 patients finished the survey with a response rate of 88.5%. The mean score of family resilience was 96.19 (SD = 9.87), highest in the dimension of maintaining a positive outlook and lowest in utilizing social resources. Patient subjective support (β = 0.22, P = 0.004), social support utilization (β = 0.13, P = 0.027), self-efficacy for managing disease (β = 0.27, P < 0.001), marriage status (divorced vs married)(β=-0.18, P = 0.002), and caregivers’ relationship with patients (siblings vs spouse)(β=-0.18, P = 0.002) were predictors of family resilience.

Conclusion

Family resilience was low among stroke patients one month after the onset. Special attention should be paid to families of patients who were divorced, cared for by siblings, or have low social support or self-efficacy in managing stroke. Further research on family-based interventions may focus on increasing patient social support and promoting their self-efficacy in managing stroke.

KEYWORDS:

• Stroke
• family resilience
• social support
• self-efficacy
• medical coping

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully thank the participants enrolled in this study and the staff of the participating hospitals for their cooperation.

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors.

Authors’ contributions

All the authors have made substantive contributions to the article.

Data availability statement

The datasets used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. https://pan.baidu.com/s/1FUbvRtIgNgF1ZEJJjXZPwg

Additional information

Funding

The study was funded by the youth program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 71904197) and the Sailing project of Second Military Medical University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript