Purpose: This study was to examine the relationship between role stress and quality of life, and the function of social support, theoretically considered to mediate the relationship between role stress and quality of life for the family caregiver of chronic inpatient.
Methods: Data were collected through questionnaire from 139 family caregivers of chronic inpatients in the C university hospital and analysed using the SPSS program. The first, second hypotheses were tested using Gamma. Partial Gamma was used to test the third hypotheses. Patterns of elaboration described by Babbie(1986) were selected to interpret the relationship of the three variable analyses.
Results: First, there was a negative relationship between role stress and quality of life(Gamma=- .379, P= .025 ) and a positive relationship between social support and quality of life(Gamma= .51, P= .001). Thus the first, second hypotheses were supported. Second, when social support was controlled, the relationship between role stress and quality of life decreased under the both conditions of low social support and high social support.
Conclusion: the result showed that role stress and quality of life had a negative relationship, social support and quality of life had a positive relationship, and social support had a mediating effect between role stress and quality of life. Therefore, nurses need to develop social support strategies to reduce role stress and to improve quality of life among family caregivers.
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