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P3‐286: Designing and validating a questionnaire to assess the impact of caregiving on patients with dementia in Colombia
Author(s) -
Vargas Juan,
MunozCollazos Mario,
Solano Eugenia,
Torres Gabriel,
Triana Javier,
Hernandez Blanca Janneth
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2012.05.1509
Subject(s) - cronbach's alpha , affect (linguistics) , anxiety , dementia , intraclass correlation , clinical psychology , psychosocial , mood , depression (economics) , psychology , quality of life (healthcare) , family caregivers , scale (ratio) , medicine , psychiatry , gerontology , psychometrics , disease , nursing , physics , communication , pathology , quantum mechanics , economics , macroeconomics
Background: Information on the psychosocial burden experienced by Colombia caregivers, as a result of the patient’s symptoms, is scarce. Our goal was to design and validate a questionnaire to evaluate the impact of caregiving on caregivers due to of patient’s symptoms. Methods:We gathered a group of professionals with experience in dementia. This group proposed which domains could affect the caregivers and elaborated the questions. Then using caregivers of patients with dementia, from four neurology services in Bogota-Colombia, we conducted focus groups; they discussed which aspects affect their lives, and then scored each proposed questions. Questions with higher scores were retained, maintaining 2-3 questions per domain. Questions that were not understood by caregivers were rewritten until all were understood. Chronbach alpha was determined for internal consistency. The validity was determined by a convergent construct between the results of our questionnaire and the presence of symptoms of anxiety, depression and impaired quality of life measured by validated Colombian Spanish versions of Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS) and SF36v2. These scales were applied to 100 caregivers. Nonparametric correlation tests were used. The test-retest reproducibility was assessed on 50 caregivers after 45 days and determined by Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) between the results of both applications. Results: Caregivers and professionals found that an instrument should include the domains of mood, functionality, caregiver symptoms, cognition and behavioral alterations. The internal consistency yielded a Cronbach alpha of 0.93. We obtained a moderate correlation between our scale and the domain of depression and a low correlation with the domain of anxiety. We found a significantly higher median score in our questionnaire in patients with symptoms of depression (112vs87, p1⁄40.001) and anxiety symptoms (114.5vs.78.5, p<0.001). The correlation between our scale and SF36v2 physical health domain was significant; in mental health domain, only the emotional function correlated. The reproducibility between applications was high for the total score and moderate for most of the individual domains (ICC1⁄40.74). Conclusions: We design and validate an instrument to assess the impact of dementia patients’ symptoms on Colombia caregivers.