Poster Presentation
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
9:00 AM - 9:45 AM
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
2:45 PM - 3:30 PM
Factors influencing Dementia Caregivers' Health-Related Quality of Life
Myoung Soo Kim, PhD, Nursing, Ulsan College, Ulsan, South Korea
| Learning Objective #1: know the Korean demented elderly caregivers' Health-related quality of life. |
| Learning Objective #2: discover the factors influencing dementia caregivers' health-related quality of life |
Purpose: The objectives of this study was to explore the health related quality of life of Korean caregiver's for demented elderly and to define factors influencing them. Method: The subjects of this study were 170 pairs of demented elderly and their caregivers. Socio-demographic of demented elderly and caregivers, Barthel index and SF-36 were used in this study. Data analysis procedure included t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient, hierarchical multiple regression. Sex of demented elderly was handled dummy coding.Results: Overall health related quality of life(HRQoL) score was 288.62 for norm based scoring. In Pearson correlation, HRQoL was positively correlated with sex of patients(r=.283, p<.001), educational level of caregiver(r=.308, p<.001), ADL of demented elderly(r=.273, p<.001), and negatively correlated with age of caregiver(r=-.316, p<.001), severity of patient(r=-.416, p<.01) burden of caregiver(r=-395, p<.001). The major factors that affect HRQoL of the caregiver of demented elderly were burden, age of caregiver, ADL, sex of demented elderly, which explained 34.5% of HRQoL. Conclusion: The highly affected factors of the caregivers' HRQoL were burden, age of caregiver, ADL. The effective program should be considered in respective nursing intervention to decrease the level of burden and to improve ADL of demented elderly. We must know the fact that contributing factor to caregiver’s health problem was caregiver’s burden, but final aim of resolution strategy was to increase the HRQoL caregivers' of demented elderly. Further studies and efforts will be needed to investigate preceding factor between burden and HRQoL.