Abstract
Background and aims: Patients with chronic illnesses such as stroke have different physical and mental problems and need the care and support of their family members. Family caregivers face many different problems and experience burnout during caregiving to their patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of care-oriented group discussion (GD) on burnout among the caregivers of patients with stroke.
Methods: This two-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study was conducted in 2019. Participants were forty family caregivers of patients with stroke randomly selected from the neurology and stroke care ward of Sina hospital, Hamadan, Iran. They were randomly allocated to two twenty-person groups. Participants in the control group received routine care services, while participants in the intervention group received routine care services in addition to care-oriented GD in six two-hour sessions. Burnout was assessed before and two weeks after the study intervention and the SPSS program (v. 22.0) was used to analyze the data through the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, paired-sample t, independent-sample t, and Chi-square tests.
Results: Groups did not significantly differ from each other respecting the pretest mean scores of burnout and all its dimensions as well as the posttest mean scores of the personal and financial dimensions of burnout (P > 0.05). However, the posttest mean scores of burnout and its social and emotional dimensions in the intervention group were significantly less than the control group (P < 0.05).
Conclusion: As an effective strategy, care-oriented GD can be used to reduce burnout among the family caregivers of patients with stroke.