Abstract:
The purposes of this cross sectional descriptive study were to study caring behavior, factors involved in caring behavior and hospital supporting needs of geriatric psychiatric patients caregivers in Nonthaburi province. The study population was geriatric psychiatric patients caregivers in Srithunya hospital year 2000 in Nonthaburi province. Samples were 223 persons obtained by two stages cluster sampling. The tools of this study were constructed interview questionnaire. The response rate was 68.2%. The data were analyzed in terms of count, percentage, mean, standard deviation. The results showed that top-three ranking of caring activities were : took the patients to see the doctors 46.1%, brought things needed 34.2% and prepared food 31.6%. The caregivers who had been trained gave higher mean scores of caring activities than those non trained caregivers. Supporting needs from hospital in information/counseling dimension found as follow : manual/leaflets 63.2%, disease knowledge 61.8% and drug use information 60.5%. For service dimension, the top three ranking were patient referral 80.3%, 24 hours emergency care 75.0% and 24 hours telephone consultation 74.3%. The results of this study would be data bases of the caregivers for caring behaviorʼs research and developing service model in supporting future need for better patient caring.