Abstract
Background and aims: Dementia is a serious disease that places undue burden on family care providers. This study aimed to investigate caring burden and associated factors of care providers for dementia patients in an urban-rural fringe area in China. Methods: A total of 197 dementia patients ≧65 years of age were identified from July–November 2007 in 22 villages of Gushan Town, Fuzhou City, China, and 152 care providers of the patients were recruited and analyzed. The Care Provider Burden Inventory was used to evaluate the main burdens including overall burden and time-dependent, developmental, physical, emotional and social burdens. Factors associating with caring burden were analyzed. Results: The prevalence rate of dementia was 7.3% (197/2696) in study area. Four factors significantly increased overall care providers’ burden score: daily hours of caring time, payment source for patients’ medical expense, care providers’ religion and care providers’ role awareness (adjusted-R2 0.617). Patients with significantly impaired function of daily living (higher ADL scores) resulted in a higher caregivers’ time-dependent burden. Increasing hour of caring per day increased care providers’ time-dependent, physical and developmental burden. Care providers’ view of their role awareness as obligation increased score of time-dependent, developmental, physical and emotional burdens. Patient with physical disability significantly increased developmental, physical, emotional and social burdens. Conclusion: The main influence factors of the caring burden of care providers’ for dementia patients were length of daily caring hours, source of care receivers’ medical expenses, patient with physical disability and care providers’ role awareness (i.e., obligated vs willing).
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Li, H., Zhang, H., Huang, H. et al. Caring burden and associated factors of care providers for senile dementia patients in an urban-rural fringe of Fuzhou City, China. Aging Clin Exp Res 24, 707–713 (2012). https://doi.org/10.3275/8721
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3275/8721