A Study on Reduction in Care Burden of the Families of the Bedridden and senile elderly

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The authors put emphasis on a project that began with a preliminary survey in 1992. An inspection of documented records made it obvious that the quality of home care given by caregivers depends on the status of illness and/or the degree of the disorder of the patients and, hence, influences the caregivers' restraint and/or burden.In 1993 an effective nursing intervention was done in response to the above progress, i.e., an all-inclusive survey was carried out by mailing questionnaires to the elderly age 75 and over who were living at home in the Chuo ward, urban Tokyo, in order to gain a comprehensive grasp of the health and caregiving status of the elderly.In response to the questionnairing on 5,043 subjects, valid responses of 3,409 were obtained and 197 (5.8%) of the bedridden and senile elderly were screened, through interviews with their caregivers to assess the burden, mental and physical status and the use of social services, etc., of the families who supply caregiving.Valid res … More ponses of 110 subjects were analyzed and as a result emotional exhaustion was remarkably observed in the care burden and then followed by depersonalization and/or decline in personal accomplishment.In 1994, using the data from the 1993 survey as a basis, a nursing intervention was done through home visits and interviews with caregivers and their subjects who need proper care services.From these home visits and interviews, the following four constituents of the care burden were extracted ; namely, the function of caregivers, the function of assistant caregivers, the function of professionals and the function of care systems. All the functions except that of caregivers were positioned at the line of stress defense, and in our view the caregiver's coping capability would be increased as the line of stress defense functions and, hence, the care burden might be reduced.In order to reduce the care burden of families, it is necessary to assess multilaterally the constituents and/or structures of care burden in the future, and at the same time the additional functions will be required to furnish information and educate the caregivers on how to utilize various social care services, thereby enabling them to cope with psychological stress effectively.These findings suggest that it is also necessary to complete the training of profesionals concerning feasible means that could promote the caregivers' abilities to cope with the bedridden and senile elderly. Less