Education Program for Family Caregivers

Evaluation of Education Program for Family Caregivers of Frail Elders

The purpose of this evaluation was to determine the effectiveness of an educational program designed to assist family caregivers to learn the knowledge and skills to take better care of their frail elder relatives and themselves.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Stress
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Education program for family caregivers of frail elders

Detailed Description

Spouses, children, and other family members typically care for frail elderly persons. These family caregivers attempt to provide care for their relative in the home, despite the potential for excessive stress to themselves. This care may extend over many years, involving unrelenting management of their relative, which puts the caregiver at risk for the development of physical and mental health consequences. The stress of caring for a frail elder may result in the institutionalization of the care receiver due to declining health or abilities in the caregiver as caregivers frequently continue to provide care at the expense of their own health. The goal of the education program is to fill an important need, that is, assist caregivers to become empowered, hardier, and have the ability to cope with the stress associated with caregiving. The aim is to investigate whether this educational intervention improves selected outcomes for family caregivers of frail elders. The selected outcomes are knowledge of caregiving, hardiness, quality of life, physical health, depressive symptoms, burden, and coping.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 42
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • West Virginia
    • Charleston, West Virginia, United States, 25304
      • West Virginia University Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, Charleston Division

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18 years of age and older
• family member participating in care of a frail elder (60 years and older)

Exclusion Criteria:

• unable to speak or read English (materials are written in English)

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm

Intervention / Treatment

Experimental: Single arm; Education program for family caregivers of frail elders.

Behavioral: Education program for family caregivers of frail elders; Family caregiver participants in the educational program will receive an educational course presented by the investigator that focuses on the care of the frail elder and themselves. The course will involve four to five consecutive weekly sessions, each 2 1/2 to 3 hours long. The educational program will be offered biannually, spring and fall seasons.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Hardiness (change over time)	Hardiness was measured using the Psychological Hardiness Scale, a 40 item scale (Younkin & Betz, 1996). Responses for each item were obtained on a 5-point Likert continuum from "Strongly Disagree" (1) to Strongly Agree (5).	pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, six-month post-intervention, and twelve-month post intervention

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Knowledge of Caregiving (change over time)	Knowledge about caregiving was operationalized by total score on a content-specific test (17 items) for the family caregivers' educational program that measured knowledge and behaviors. True/false answers were given to items.	pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, six-month post-intervention, and twelve-month post intervention
Quality of Life (change over time)	Quality of life measured using a Cantril (1965) ladder scale. The participants viewed a picture of a ladder with nine rungs, with the top rung labeled "best possible life" (9) and the bottom rung labeled "worst possible life (0).	pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, six-month post-intervention, and twelve-month post intervention
Physical and Mental Health (change over time)	The SF-36v2 Health Survey (Ware & Sherboume, 1992), a 36-item self-report scale was used to measure the caregiver's view of their health.	pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, six-month post-intervention, and twelve-month post intervention
Depressive Symptomatology (change over time)	The Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977), a 20 item self report scale, was used to measure depressive symptomatology. Participants rated how frequently each symptom occurred during the past week on a scale ranging from rarely or none of the time (0) to most or all of the time (3).	pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, six-month post-intervention, and twelve-month post intervention
Caregiver Burden (change over time)	The Caregiver Burden Inventory (CBI), developed by Novak and Guest (1989), a 24-item multidimensional measure was used to measure caregiver burden. This inventory includes five factors: Time-dependence burden, Developmental burden, physical burden, Social burden, and Emotional burden.	pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, six-month post-intervention, and twelve-month post intervention
Coping (change over time)	The Jalowiec Coping Scale (JCS) (Jalowiec, Murphy, & Powers, 1984) was used to measure coping mechanisms. There are 60 items classified into 8 different coping styles: confrontive, evasive, optimistic, fatalistic, emotive, palliative, supportant, and self-reliant.	pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, six-month post-intervention, and twelve-month post intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: CAMC Health System
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Barbara L Nunley, PhD, RN, West Virginia University School of Nursing

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Sorensen S, Pinquart M, Duberstein P. How effective are interventions with caregivers? An updated meta-analysis. Gerontologist. 2002 Jun;42(3):356-72. doi: 10.1093/geront/42.3.356.
• Burgio L, Lichstein KL, Nichols L, Czaja S, Gallagher-Thompson D, Bourgeois M, Stevens A, Ory M, Schulz R; REACH Investigators. Judging outcomes in psychosocial interventions for dementia caregivers: the problem of treatment implementation. Gerontologist. 2001 Aug;41(4):481-9. doi: 10.1093/geront/41.4.481.
• Acton GJ, Kang J. Interventions to reduce the burden of caregiving for an adult with dementia: a meta-analysis. Res Nurs Health. 2001 Oct;24(5):349-60. doi: 10.1002/nur.1036.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): March 1, 2006
• Primary Completion (Actual): September 1, 2011
• Study Completion (Actual): January 1, 2017

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: October 1, 2008
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 1, 2008
• First Posted (Estimate): October 2, 2008

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): July 7, 2017
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 5, 2017
• Last Verified: July 1, 2017

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: caregiver burden; family caregivers; caregiver education; caregiver hardiness; caregiver depressive symptoms
• Other Study ID Numbers: 06-02-1779

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO