Burden of Care giving On Informal Care Givers Of Stroke Survivors in The Western Region

ABSTRACT 

Background: Stroke is a life-changing event which leaves the stroke survivors with varied degrees of disability requiring a lot of assistance from their informal caregivers who require substantial amounts of uncompensated time and energy to carry out their activities of daily living over a prolonged duration of time. The informal caregivers are therefore exposed to physical, psychological, social and financial problems, commonly reported as burden which affects their quality of life and may further compromise the stroke survivor’s recovery. Objectives: This study sought to give a deeper understanding of the burden of caregiving on informal caregivers of stroke survivors and the possible factors that contribute to the burden. Method: This facility based cross sectional study involved 118 pairs of stroke survivors and their informal caregivers over a 2 month period. Structured questionnaires were used to obtain quantitative data on socio-demographic and background characteristics, caregiver burden and level of disability whiles focus group discussion was used to obtain qualitative data. Descriptive analysis was done for socio-demographic data whiles Chisquare and logistic regression were used for inferential analysis at a significance level of p