The effectiveness of case management and nursing counselling among caregivers of patients with dementia: A pilot study

According to the data released by the Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2021, in 2019, 235,000 patients sought medical treatment for dementia-related diseases at the National-Health-Insurance-participating hospitals and clinics for more than three outpatient visits or had been hospitalised, and the number had increased by 15,000 from the previous year (Ministry of Health and Welfare, 2021). This implies that families are affected, causing tremendous physical, psychological, and economic pressures and burdens on the caregivers and families of the patient. The estimated social cost of caring for dementia families increased from $1.3 trillion in 2019 to $2.8 trillion in 2030 (World Health Organisation, 2021). Thus, long-term care for the dementia population has become a critical issue in medical care and social services in Taiwan and worldwide. In 2017, Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare has been starting Dementia care policy with 10 years long-term care plan through set up dementia care centre. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of dementia care centre for reducing the burden and improving the quality of life for caregivers of dementia patients. This pilot study adopts a quasi-experimental research design and uses purposive sampling to select in house informal caregivers of dementia patients who are part of a dementia collaborative care programme at a medical centre in the northern region and were willing to participate in this study. Upon enrolment in the study, subjects were given a pre-test, followed by a one-hour face-to-face nursing consultation and assessment after 2 weeks. Subsequently, a telephone nursing consultation was conducted once a month for 3 months. Two weeks after completing all counselling sessions, a post-test was administered to measure the caregiver burden with The Chinese version of the Caregiver Burden Inventory and the quality of life for caregivers with The ‘Chinese Health Questionnaire CHQ-12’. After providing case management and nursing counselling, the total caregiver burden score significantly decreased from an average of 40.1 (SD = 21.6) at the pre-test to an average of 38.6 (SD = 21.4) at the post-test, reaching statistical significance (p < 0.01). The results of this study showed that providing dementia caregivers with case management and nursing consultation services helps improve the overall caregiver burden (particularly emotional burden and physical burden) as well as the health questionnaire scores. However, the social burden and time burden did not improve after receiving case management and counselling among caregivers; instead, post-test scores of these aspects were significantly higher.