Education Program for Family Caregivers

Stress Clinical Trial

Official title:

Evaluation of Education Program for Family Caregivers of Frail Elders

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT00764647
• Other study ID #: 06-02-1779
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• First received: October 1, 2008
• Last updated: July 5, 2017
• Start date: March 2006
• Est. completion date: January 2017

Study information

• Verified date: July 2017
• Source: CAMC Health System
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

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.

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.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 42
• Est. completion date: January 2017
• Est. primary completion date: September 2011
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years and older

Eligibility

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)

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Stress

Intervention

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.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	West Virginia University Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, Charleston Division	Charleston	West Virginia

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
CAMC Health System

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

References & Publications (3)

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. — View Citation

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. — View Citation

Sörensen S, Pinquart M, Duberstein P. How effective are interventions with caregivers? An updated meta-analysis. Gerontologist. 2002 Jun;42(3):356-72. Review. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	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	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
Secondary	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
Secondary	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
Secondary	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
Secondary	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
Secondary	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