Care Dependency of Hospitalized Stroke Patients Based on Family Caregivers’ and Nurses’ Assessments: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Stroke impacts care dependency, and thus the patient needs home care after suffering a stroke. This study was carried out to investigate similarities and differences between the assessments made by family caregivers and nurses regarding the care dependency level of stroke patients in Indonesian hospitals. This study was a comparative study of the care dependency of stroke patients. Data were collected on the stroke wards on the day of admission using the Care Dependency Scale (CDS). The sample consisted of 118 family caregivers and 21 nurses. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was performed to determine the mean differences between the paired data collected by family caregivers and nurses. The results of this study show that significant differences exist between the family caregivers’ and nurses’ assessments regarding the care dependency levels of stroke patients. Nurses assigned higher scores to all CDS items than family caregivers did. Significant differences between the family caregivers’ and nurses’ assessments were observed on numerous items of the Care Dependency Scale. This study contributes to efforts to raise awareness of potential differences in perceived care dependency levels of stroke patients. The findings can help nurses plan the patient’s discharge together with family caregivers.

A study on the effect of using the video teach-back method in continuous nursing care of stroke patients

“…In this study, we found that the teach-back method is an easy-to-understand, safe, and effective method of health education (13). Normative family continuity care helps patients and their families to receive targeted healthcare guidance and plays an important role in promoting recovery from disease (17,18). For family caregivers, the results of this study showed that there were significant effects of time, group, and the time-group interaction on total caring ability scores and scores on each of the four dimensions of caring abilities.…”

“…In this study, we found that the teach-back method is an easy-to-understand, safe, and effective method of health education ( 13 ). Normative family continuity care helps patients and their families to receive targeted healthcare guidance and plays an important role in promoting recovery from disease ( 17 , 18 ).…”

Care dependency in older stroke patients with comorbidities: a latent profile analysis

“…A study in Singapore noted that by adult children taking turns in care, pooling resources, and distributive support (determining which part of care each person is competent in), patients avoid to some extent the influence brought about by medical decision-making activities and become less dependent ( Tyagi et al, 2021 ); on the other hand, it has been noted that the cultural context influences the tendency for children to care for their parents, which has an impact on the children’s own lives and work. In this regard, parents feel guilty and try to reduce their needs to ease the burden of their children ( Liu et al, 2020b ; Liu, 2021 ; Nursiswati et al, 2022 ), resulting in an apparent “low dependency”.…”

“…On the one hand, for patients with severe stroke and concurrent mobility impairment, cognitive impairment and other neurological deficits, being an adult child shows a more active role in monitoring changes in the patient's condition, improving communication with the health care team and helping the patient in making medical decisions during the early stages of the illness (van Ryn et al, 2011;Shin et al, 2013;Isenberg et al, 2018;Fenton et al, 2022).A study in Singapore noted that by adult children taking turns in care, pooling resources, and distributive support (determining which part of care each person is competent in), patients avoid to some extent the influence brought about by medical decision-making activities and become less dependent (Tyagi et al, 2021); on the other hand, it has been noted that the cultural context influences the tendency for children to care for their parents, which has an impact on the children's own lives and work. In this regard, parents feel guilty and try to reduce their needs to ease the burden of their children (Liu et al, 2020b;Liu, 2021;Nursiswati et al, 2022), resulting in an apparent "low dependency".…”

Topics Mentioned by Stroke Patients during Supportive Phone Calls—Implications for Individualized Aftercare Programs

“…If stroke pilots had visited patients at home, other requirements that patients did not actively mention by themselves could have been more obvious. In addition, further topics might have been generated by investigating the caregiver’s or professional’s opinion on the patients’ needs, which has been performed in earlier approaches [ 43 , 44 ]. Third, because of the monocentric and, in proper meaning, non-interventional study design, the sample size is relatively small, and a control group is lacking, which limits the generalizability of the study findings.…”