Development of a Teaching Package for Caregivers to Care for Older Patients with Stroke

Abstract: A teaching package for caregivers of patients with stroke was developed based on caregiversu needs, a literature review, and professional validation. The purpose of this study was to develop a teaching package for caregivers to care for older patients with stroke and to test the usefulness of the teaching package for improving caregiving knowledge of caregivers. The teaching package consisted of two booklets and a videotape covering the same contents. The study was divided into three phases. Phase I included the development of teaching contents from a literature review and two brainstorming groups (caregivers and health care providers). Phase II included the validation of teaching contents by six health care providers and two experienced caregivers. Phase III included a process of testing the usefulness of the teaching package on knowledge of caregivers of older patients with stroke. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a sample of 30 caregivers of older patients with stroke who were admitted to medical and surgical wards at Ramathibodi Hospital, Bangkok. They were given self-administered questionnaires and interviewed from June to September 2003. The  Questionnaire of Knowledge on Caregiving and the Assessment Form of Caregiversu Opinions toward the Teaching Package were employed in a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design. An analysis using Wilcoxon matched-pairs igned-ranks test revealed that knowledge of caregivers at posttest was significantly higher than at pretest. In addition, the caregivers reported that: 1) the contents were relevant and adequate to their needs; 2) the contents were understandable, and 3) the teaching package was practical. These findings point out that the contents of the instructional media for caregivers developed in accordance with learning needs of the learner along with a literature review and professional validation are useful for improving caregiversu knowledge to care for patients with stroke. In addition, information from experienced caregivers is helpful for establishment of the teaching package in identifying learning needs of new caregivers. Also, testing the usefulness of the instructional media for improving caregiver knowledge and eliciting their opinions enhances the acceptability of the instructional media to be applied in nursing practice. Therefore, this teaching package is a useful resource for caregivers to care for older patients with stroke.