Does a multimedia education program work as a remedy for stress and burden in family caregivers of elderly heart attack patients? A clinical trial study.

Background: Supportive care has been found to improve quality of life and reduce the disease burden for aging individuals. After a heart attack, elderly patients often require a caregiver. In developing communities, caregiving responsibilities frequently fall on family members. Accordingly, we designed a randomized controlled clinical trial to assess the effect of an educational program on perceived stress and care burden among family caregivers of elderly heart attack patients.

Method: In this clinical trial (IRCT20220905055894N1, 01/02/2023), family member caregivers were the study participants, assigned to either intervention or control groups using a simple random sampling method. The control group received only routine in-home caregiving information, without additional nurse training or support, whereas the intervention group received multimedia-based training, monitoring, and communication support from a trained nurse over one month. Perceived stress levels and caregiving burden were measured using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Caregiving Burden Inventory, respectively.

Results: Before the intervention, a high level of caregiving stress (34.07 ± 8.61 in the control group vs. 34.17 ± 8.62 in the intervention group) and burden (77.7 ± 15.51 in the control group vs. 79 ± 15.6 in the intervention group) was observed. After one month of intervention, the average scores of stress and burden remained unchanged in the control group, whereas the intervention group showed a significant reduction (P < 0.001). The inter-group comparison revealed lower levels of stress and care burden in the intervention group (P < 0.001).

Conclusion: A brief multimedia education intervention could help alleviate the stressful conditions experienced by family caregivers of elderly heart attack patients. Future studies could investigate whether a more extended educational program would have more lasting effects.