Napaphon Ritteeveerakul. Factors predicting health status on family caregivers of demented elderly patients . Master's Degree(Adult Nursing). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2005.
Factors predicting health status on family caregivers of demented elderly patients
Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of amount of care, strain from direct
care, communication problems, and rewards of caregiving on health status of family caregivers of
elderly patients with dementia based on the conceptual framework of Lazarus and Folkman (1984). The
subjects were 90 primary caregivers who took elderly patients with dementia to receive treatment at the
out-patient department of King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital and the Prasat Neurology Institute
between January to June 2004. The instruments used in data collection were composed of the
demographic characteristics questionnaire, the amount of care questionnaire, the strain from direct care
questionnaire, the rewards of caregiving questionnaire, the communication problems questionnaire, and
the SF-36 health survey questionnaire. As for data analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product
moment correlation, and multiple regression analysis were employed.
The findings revealed that the family caregivers were between 24 and 78 years old (78.9%),
with the average age of 51.82 years, were married (54.5%), held an undergraduate degree (32.3%), were
Buddhists (94.5%), and were daughters of the elderly patients with dementia (47.8%). The main reason
for performing caregiving was duty and responsibility (47.7%), and they spent an average of 12.78
hours per day providing care. Also, the subjects did not have any health problems before performing
caregiving (60%), but close to three-quarters (73.3%) developed some form of health problem after
caregiving including stress, anxiety, aching, moodiness, headache or dizziness, sleeplessness, and
exhaustion. In addition, the subjects assessed the amount of care at a rather high level (mean = 46.16;
SD = 10.36, Skewness = -.012), strain from direct care and communication problems at a rather low
level (mean = 89.38; SD = 36.25, Skewness = 1.029 and mean = 7.52; SD = 4.23, Skewness = .845,
respectively), and rewards of caregiving and health status at a rather high level (mean = 64.23; SD =
22.28, Skewness = -.487 and mean = 2467.89; SD = 506.398, Skewness = -.374, respectively). Both
strain from direct care and communication problems were the predictors to influence health status of
family caregivers’ (R2 = 27.4, p <.05)
Based on these findings, it is recommended that nurses should assess the health status of
family caregivers, especially those who suffer from a health problem before performing their caregiving
duty. Also, nurses should work collaboratively with family members and heatlhcare teams to reduce
stress, promote communication skills, and offer consultation to family caregivers with a risk of health
problem so as to enable family caregivers to maintain their health status and potential to effectively
provide care to elderly patients with dementia