Development of home-based care educational programme for the family caregivers of activity limited older people: an educational programme model for community nurses.

Background/aim: A home-based care educational programme for family caregivers of activity-limited older people was developed and implemented to provide caregiver education and to teach basic caregiving techniques. The purpose of the home-based care educational programme was to improve the caregivers' knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to perform the caregiving tasks with reduced physical strain.

Methods: The educational programme model comprises the knowledge and skills necessary to carry out the caretaking responsibilities of older people, especially those with limited activities. It was conducted as an interventional study recruiting two groups (n=72) as intervention (n=36) and control group (n=36), and the knowledge of the caregivers was evaluated. The teaching sessions were planned considering the adult educational learning theories and guided by a developed educational handbook.

Results: The pre and post mean±SD knowledge scores of the intervention group (43.78±12.41; 89.78±5.61) showed a significant difference (p<0.001), whereas the pre and post knowledge mean±SD scores of the control group (50.69±17.90; 51.43±17.79) showed no significant improvement (p>0.05). The difference between the pre-test and post-test between the two groups was significant (p<0.0001).

Conclusions: At the end of the educational programme, participants valued the opportunity that they received, and the assessment of knowledge before and after the programme showed an improvement in caregivers' knowledge. The study suggests conducting home-based or community-based health education programmes for caregivers of older people with limited activities, with the involvement of responsible healthcare professionals and leaders.