Burden of Caregiving on Informal Caregivers of Stroke Survivors in the Western Region.

ABSTRACT

Background: A stroke is a life-changing event that leaves the stroke survivors with varying 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 a 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 while 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