Learning care from professionals : Evaluation of an educational program for caregiving relatives

Abstract

Caring for relatives is often associated with psychological and physical stress. Caregiving relatives usually slip into the role unprepared and they lack both the knowledge and skills to fulfil the associated tasks. This study tried to measure whether participation in aspecial educational program affects the trust in one's own ability to care, the quality of life and the stress perception of caring relatives. A total of 58caring relatives were recruited to participate in the interventional study with a pre-post design. The intervention involves an 8‑month educational program, which was especially developed. The group was asked to answer validated questionnaires (ASKU, EQ-5D and HPS) at three time points (T1, T2, T3). The results showed asignificant influence of the educational program on self-efficacy (p=0.0012) of the participants between T1 and T3. With respect to the subjective quality of life and the perception of stress no significant effects were shown. The results showed that the participation of family carers in the educational program has a different influence on the defined parameters. Not only the stable quality of life but also the short-term significant reduction in subjective stress perception directly after the training (T2) can be emphasized as positive indicators for the program.