Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics, 2025, Vol.13, No.3, 145-153 http://medscipublisher.com/index.php/cge 150 preparation and training. They often do not know how to deal with patients' symptoms, use drugs, nor do they know how to provide appropriate physical care and psychological comfort to patients at home (Ferrell and Wittenberg, 2017; Ullgren et al., 2018). This deficiency of knowledge and skills will make family members more exhausted when taking care of patients, generating stress and a sense of helplessness, which has a negative impact on the health of both family members and patients (Aghili et al., 2024; Parvizi and Ay, 2024). Although family members are very important in care, there is no systematic education and continuous assistance to enhance their caregiving ability. Most of the existing assistance only focuses on the psychological aspects of family members, seldom teaches them practical care skills, and does not consider the health needs of family members themselves much. This exposes a major defect of the current care model (Ferrell and Wittenberg, 2017; Ahn et al., 2020). 6.2 Lack of standardized nursing plans and assessment tools Because there is no unified family care plan and effective assessment methods, both nursing practice and research are very chaotic. Studies have found that the nursing methods and implementation approaches adopted in different places vary greatly, so it is difficult to compare the effects and determine which approach is the best (Ahn et al., 2020; Dieperink et al., 2020). This inconsistency also exists when measuring the effectiveness of nursing. Different studies evaluate with different standards and methods, making it difficult to determine whether these nursing methods are effective or not (Ahn et al., 2020; Dieperink et al., 2020). Moreover, there are no clear regulations or unified procedures guiding family members on how to participate in cancer treatment. This often leads to family members' involvement in care being rather casual, entirely depending on what the responsible medical staff or the hospital does. This arbitrariness will prevent the needs of patients and their families from being met, and also waste the opportunity to optimize care (Dieperink et al., 2020; Kovman et al., 2022). 6.3 Insufficient policy support and lagging resource allocation The relevant policies and resource allocation have failed to keep up with people's understanding of the importance of family members in cancer treatment. Family members take care of patients but do not receive systematic support, such as financial subsidies, temporary assistance in care, professional guidance, etc., which makes the burden on the family increasingly heavy. If resources are provided slowly or in small quantities, it will make family members exhausted from taking care of patients, affect the normal life of the family, and also bring economic difficulties (Aghili et al., 2024; Parvizi and Ay, 2024). Moreover, due to the lack of strong policy support, the needs of family members when caring for patients are often overlooked in the process of medical planning and services. This has led to the fact that family-centered care methods have not been well integrated into the medical system, and there is very little funding for researching related care models, making it impossible to develop and evaluate effective family-involved care methods (Ferrell and Wittenberg, 2017; Dieperink et al., 2020). 7 Future Research Directions and Suggestions 7.1 Strengthen high-quality empirical research and intervention assessment In the research on the participation of family members of cancer patients in discharge care, there is a great need to conduct more reliable studies and evaluate the care measures with more rigorous methods. Current research often leads to research results that cannot be widely applied due to insufficient quantity, narrow research scope and imrigorous methods (Kishino et al., 2022). In future research, more scientific comparative experiments and long-term follow-up studies should be designed to see if the method of involving family members in care is effective and what impacts it will have on patients and their families (Ahn et al., 2020; Dieperink et al., 2020). In addition, the research scope should be expanded and not only focus on specific regions, certain family situations or cancer types. Only by incorporating more research subjects in different situations can universal and effective family care methods be identified, as well as key points of care for special circumstances. In this way, a more comprehensive and flexible care model can be developed (Ahn et al., 2020; Dieperink et al., 2020).
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