Effect of ınformatıon to caregıvers of Stroke patıents wıth Percutaneous endoscopıc Gastrostomy

Stroke is one of the serious neurological disorders that occur due to decreased blood flow to a certain part of the brain due to vascular injuries. Stroke ranks second in Europe among the causes of death in the world, fourth in the USA and second in Turkey. More than half of these patients who continue to live become partially or completely dependent on others for self-care and daily living activities. During this process, self-care is of critical importance in patients performing daily living activities and preventing complications. Self-care and needs of these patients are usually met by family members or relatives. The continuous care and needs of patients who are dependent or semi-dependent in self-care and daily living activities cause caregivers to have difficulty and experience burnout syndrome. This situation negatively affects caregivers physiologically, psychologically, socially and economically. The caregiver's being affected by all these negative situations and having difficulty while providing care is defined as caregiver burden in the literature. If this burden causes the caregiver individual to have difficulty in performing their own daily life activities, it causes the caregiver's self-care ability to decrease or even to be unable to perform them. At the same time, it shows that caregivers experience stress and burnout due to inadequacy in coping with patients' symptoms, unexpected needs arising during the care process, and this process causes changes in the caregivers' lives. Since most individuals have to continue their professional and social roles in addition to being caregivers, their areas of responsibility expand, their quality of life is negatively affected, and they may experience burnout due to changes in their free time and work-related activities. There are a limited number of outdated studies on family caregivers of stroke patients, and these studies reported that the care process has negative effects on the health and well-being of caregivers. Due to the sudden onset of disability and the chronic nature of recovery from stroke, caring for a stroke patient has been found to have a negative impact on the physical, mental, and psychological health of caregivers. As a result of the literature review, it was noticed that studies evaluating the difficulties experienced by caregivers and their self-care were generally conducted with caregivers who care for individuals with chronic diseases such as oncology and Alzheimer's. For this reason, determining the caregiver burden and providing regular support to caregivers, and providing planned training and counseling can help to suggest solutions to all these problems. Therefore, the aim of the study is to examine the effect of information provided to caregivers of stroke patients on the care burden and self-care ability.

Inclusion criteria

• 18 years of age and older, conscious, person-time and place oriented,
• No psychiatric problems, no hearing-speech or visual impairments,
• Can speak Turkish,
• Patient relatives who accompany the patient in the hospital environment and will continue to provide care at home and who accept the research were included.

Exclusion criteria

• Relatives of patients who could not be contacted,
• Resulted in death,
• Did not accept the study were not included in the study.