The challenge of home caring : evaluation of burden carers of patients with stroke

To study the burden of the caregivers of the patients affected by stroke contributes to the improvement of nursing care by making it more skilled and geared to the needs of this population. The objective was to evaluate the main burden of family caregivers of the patients with stroke. Cross-sectional study was conducted from January to April 2010. It was carried out in Fortaleza-Ceará, Brazil, in 2010, at Home Care Program. Established themselves as inclusion criteria: be the principal family caregiver and pursue such activity for at least two months. Caregivers who were unable to give information about the health-disease patients, and caregivers of stroke patients who had mental disorders, and other neurological diseases, were alcoholics or drug addicts were excluded. We interviewed 61 caregivers in relation to demographic data, activities performed, presence of pain, assessment of financial expenditures, the presence of psychiatric symptoms through Self Report Questionnaire (SRQ-20), cognitive evaluation by Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and evaluation of the burden of care for the Caregiver Burden Scale (CBS). Patients were asked about the sociodemographic, health history, degree of dependence in the Activities of the Daily Living (basic and instrumental) and cognitive evaluation (MMSE) and anthropometric evaluation was performed. The data were compiled in the Excel software and analyzed through the SPSS program, version 15.0. The level of significance considered was 5% (p