The caregiving responsibilities of the caregivers who take care of the people with the spinal cord injuries, their state of handling stress and determination of their social support that perceive

This study has been carried out as a descriptive study aiming to determine the responsibilities of the caregivers who take care of the people with the spinal cord injuries, their state of handling stress and determination of their social support that they perceive.129 caregivers who took care of the bedridden patients diagnosed with parapleji and tetrapleji and those under treatment in TSK (Turkish Armed Forces) Rehabilitation and Caring Center between December 2010 and April 2011 were taken to the research(study) sampling. Data were collected through face to face interwiev and the form about the demographic features of both patients with the spinal cord injuries and their caregivers, Barthel Index, Caregiver Reaction Assessment, Ways of Coping Inventory veya Style of Coping With Stress Scale and The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. The required permission to make this research has been taken from The Ethics Committee of GATA, The Survey Committee of GATA, TSK Rehabilitation Center Scientific Studies and Investigations Authoritazation. SPSS 16.0 programme has been used in assessment of the data.The mean age of caregivers is 41.19 ± 13.82, %72.9 of them are married and %76.7 of them are women. The mean age of patient with spinal cord injuries is 34.45 ±15.27, 82,9% of them are men. The most common reason of trauma is traffic accidents. (34,4%) Depending on dependency level of caring area, it is determined that the caregivers who take care of middle dependent individuals have a little more financial problems. According to the duration of caregiving, it is determined that those of caregivers who give care for 5 and less than 5 months have less health problems. The caregivers that give care to the patients with komplet-A injury level have low family support scores. Caregives who give care for over 8 hours a day have much more health problems.The findings of our study determine that the caring burden, financial and health problems of caregivers, besides they clearly show that there is a need for caring service at multidiciplinary houses. The Community Health Nurses have an important duties in health education, consultancy for community support service and reducing the caring burden of caregivers.