KOREAN FAMILY CAREGIVERS’ EDUCATIONAL NEEDS FOR MANAGING BPSD: THE SECOND YEAR STUDY

Abstract

As a second series of the study titled “Let’s read their minds”, this study aimed to identify Korean family caregivers’ educational needs for managing Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD). Data were collected by focus-group interviews with 8 family caregivers (7 women, mean age = 67.88 ± 9.75) who registered in a local dementia support centers located in Seoul. Five open-ended questions about managing BPSD were asked: What is the most difficult symptom for you to manage?; What triggers the symptom?; How do you deal with the symptom when it occurs?; Why the symptom bothers?; and What education would be helpful for you? Among BPSD, agitation, aggressive behavior, and apathy were excluded from the interview topic because they were confirmed in the study conducted in 2013. Data were analyzed using content analysis. The difficult BPSD that family caregivers experienced were identified as suspicion, delusion, hallucination, wandering, depression, refusal to care, inappropriate elimination, and inappropriate eating. Most of respondents answered that they first scolded, hit, or argued with the patient when BPSD occurred and wanted to know how to effectively manage the patient’s BPSD. The findings suggest that education is necessary for improving family caregivers’ competencies to handle BPSD. The education should be comprehensive enough to make caregivers acquire general attitudes towards the persons with dementia as well as specific skills for managing BPSD. This work was supported by the National Institute for Dementia Grant (2014-02). Correspondence to Jun-Ah Song (E-mail: jasong@korea.ac.kr).