Determine of the care load and level of readiness of hospital caregivers taking care of neurological patients before discharged

The aim of this study was to determine the pre-discharge preparedness and care burden of the caregivers of neurology patients. The sample of this descriptive and cross-sectional study consisted of people who provided care at home to 206 inpatients diagnosed with neurologic disorder at Gazi University Health Research and Application Center and Ankara Training and Research Hospital. The data were collected using a Questionnaire Form, the Burden Interview (BI) and the Preparedness for Caregiving Scale (PCS). Necessary legal permissions and ethics committee approval were obtained. The data were analyzed by Kruskall Wallis Analysis, Mann Whitney U test, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Simple Linear Regression as well as descriptive statistics. According to the results; 64.6% of the caregivers were female, the average age was 44.36 years old, 70.9% were married, 49% were high school or university graduates and 72.3% were the patients' 1st degree relatives. Caregivers obtained an average of 36.13 ± 15.533 points from the BI and an average of 19.94 ±7.640 points from the PCS. There was a significant negative correlation between the caregivers' BS score and the PCS score (p <0.05). Accordingly, it has been observed that, as the care burden increases, the preparedness for care decreases. As a result, the caregivers' preparedness for care and care burden were found to be moderate. In order to increase the preparedness level of caregivers and to reduce the care burden of individuals with neurological diseases, it is recommended to provide practical patient care to caregivers and to provide discharge training tailored to the patient to the patient and their family.