Physical, emotional and social burden of elderly patients’ informal caregivers

Abstract

Objective: Assess the burden and identify the burden-related factors in home-baded informal caregivers of bedridden elderly attended by the Family Health Strategy. Methods: Analytical, cross-sectional study involving 208 informal caregivers. The data were collected between February and July 2017 by applying the characterization script and the Informal Caregiver Burden Assessment Questionnaire. For analysis purposes, the Statistical Package for the Social Science, version 20.0 was used. Descriptive (central trend and dispersion, absolute and relative frequency measures) and inferential (Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests; Spearman correlation test) statistics were applied. Results: The mean total burden score was 71.1 (±26.3). A statistically significant difference was observed in the total burden and domain scores according to the variables: marital status of caregiver, degree of kinship with the elderly and all clinical variables of the caregivers. A positive correlation was registered between the burden and the caregiver’s age and between the burden and number of daily hours spent on care. Conclusion: The burden was higher for the partners, caregivers with comorbidities, pain related to the activity performed and caregivers who considered their health as regular.