Impact of the Internet+ Transitional Care on Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practice of Family Caregivers of Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Purpose: To determine the impact of the internet+ transitional care on knowledge, attitudes, and practice (KAP) of family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and analyze the practicability of the internet+ Medical Messenger and WeChat network support platforms. Background: The number of AD patients in China has exceeded 10 million, ranking first in the world. Home care is the main way of care for AD patients. We use the Internet platform to implement “online” combined with “offline” continuous care for AD patients and home caregivers, and provide personalized health education and guidance, so that caregivers can easily master disease-related knowledge, establish positive care beliefs, improve care ability, and promote the improvement of patients’ caregivers’ knowledge, attitude and practice. Method: The family caregivers of 77 patients with AD were randomly divided into two groups (intervention group [40 patients] and control group [37 patients]). The intervention group adopted the internet + transitional care, while the control group adopted traditional transitional care. The KAP of the two groups of family caregivers before intervention, 3 months after intervention, and 6 months after intervention were analyzed. Results: The KAP scores of the 77 family caregivers before intervention were 17.39 ± 2.92, 33.42 ± 4.77, and 57.65 ± 13.84. There was no significant difference in the knowledge scores in the care (t=1.89, P=0.062) and symptom (t=1.78, P=0.078) dimensions 3 months after intervention, while there was a significant difference in the other KAP dimensions (P < 0.05). Conclusions: The internet + transitional care improves the level to of KAP among family caregivers of patients with AD and the effect was proportional to time.