Roles performed by family caregivers to help individuals with cancer manage symptoms: A qualitative study.

302 Background: Cancer family caregivers often assume an influential role in helping their care recipients manage physical and psychological symptoms resulting from the cancer itself or from treatment. Although this dynamic is broadly acknowledged, our objective was to delineate with greater specificity the various roles family caregivers undertake in helping patients manage their symptoms. Methods: Qualitative study employing one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with family caregivers (n = 15) and their care recipients with Stage I-IV cancer (n = 24). Participants were recruited from a large academic comprehensive cancer center between January 2025 and June 2025. Interviews were professionally transcribed and analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Results: Caregivers averaged 58 years, were half Black (50%) and half white (50%) race, and were mostly female (87%) and the patient’s spouse/partner (53%). Patients averaged 57 years and were mostly female (79%) with breast (42%) and gynecologic (17%) cancer. Themes describing family caregiver roles in supporting patients’ symptoms included: 1) assisting with direct symptom management, including managing medications, supporting activities of daily living, and attending to wound care; 2) providing emotional support and motivation, including encouraging positivity, maintaining morale, and offering reassurance to help patients cope with anxiety and depressed mood; 3) promoting self-care and rest to mitigate or prevent symptoms from occurring, such as assuming household chores and encouraging health eating and exercise; and 4) serving as symptom reporter, advocate, and information seeker, often by communicating with the care team and other services (e.g., pharmacies) and attending medical appointments with patients. A key struggle for caregivers in these various roles was finding the right balance of providing assistance with respecting patients’ autonomy and independence. Conclusions: These findings highlight a previously under-specified set of critical symptom partnering roles that cancer family caregivers play in how patients manage their symptoms. Optimizing these roles may represent novel targets for interventions to support the symptom partnering role of family caregivers.