تأثیر آموزش مطابق الگوی خودمراقبتی اورِم بر سطح مشقت و رنج عضو خانواده مراقبت‌کننده از بیمار دارای صدمات نخاعی

Objective Family member caregivers of patients with spinal cord injuries experience varying degrees of&nbsp;burden because of the long process in the care of their patients. These conditions have different negative&nbsp;consequences for the family caregivers. One of the most important protective factors against the suffering&nbsp;of the caregivers is their knowledge about care giving process. Therefore, the aim of the present&nbsp;study was to evaluate the effect of educational intervention based on Orem self-care model on family&nbsp;caregivers' burden of patients with spinal cord injuries. Materials & Methods This was a quasi-experimental study with pretest and posttest design and control&nbsp;group. It was conducted on patients with spinal cord injuries at South Khorasan Province. Research units&nbsp;purposefully selected and then were randomly allocated to experimental and control groups. Experimental&nbsp;group received educational intervention based on Orem self-care model for patients with spinal&nbsp;cord injuries consisted of eight 40-minute teaching sessions at the center. To measure the burden of&nbsp;caregivers, 22-item Zarit questionnaire was used with content validity index of 80% and Cronbach &alpha; of&nbsp;0.79. The questionnaire was completed before and after the intervention in experimental and control&nbsp;groups. The results were analyzed by SPSS version 16 using descriptive (frequency, mean and standard&nbsp;deviation) and analytical (t-test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient) statistics. Results Mean of burden in caregivers was not significantly different between the 2 groups before The&nbsp;intervention. But, we observed significant differences between the 2 groups after the intervention. The&nbsp;difference between mean of burden before (3.2&plusmn;0.33) and after (3.11&plusmn;0.66) the intervention was significant&nbsp;(P<0.05) which shows the positive impact of education. The results obtained with regard to the&nbsp;relationship between mean burden of caregivers and demographic variables indicate that there is a significant&nbsp;relationship between the burden of caregivers and their income, before and after intervention&nbsp;in 2 groups (P<0.05). Furthermore, burden score shows a significant positive association with the duration&nbsp;of caring the damaged patient. The longer the duration of caring, the higher would be the burden&nbsp;score (P<0.05, r=0.3). The burden score relates also with increasing age, both positively and significantly&nbsp;(P<0.05, r=0.3). There was no significant correlation between other variables and burden score (P>0.05). Conclusion The results of this study suggest that education of family caregivers of patients with spinal&nbsp;cord injuries based on Orem self-care model can reduce their experienced burden resulted from chronic&nbsp;and long term caregiving involvement. Moreover, the financial situation and occupation of caregivers&nbsp;could be a positive relational factor in their burden. Therefore, we suggest that the family of caregivers &nbsp;be under support and supervision of social and therapeutic supportive organizations. Also, with regard to&nbsp;long-term care of these patients, some measures like caring the patient at home with support and backing&nbsp;of spinal-cord injury centers to reduce the pressure on the family of caregivers are recommended.