Campus Location

Abilene Campus (Residential)

Date of Award

12-2020

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4719-423

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Social Work

Degree Name

Master of Science

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Wayne Paris

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Malcolm Scott

Abstract

Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease that affects nearly 50 million people worldwide and will continue to increase exponentially with the aging of the population. The current work is an attempt to identify the needs of a subset of Alzheimer’s patient caregivers who have placed their family member to help identify the specific psychosocial needs the family member may have. This will help agency staff to tailor specific plans in their interactions with both the patient and family member to help reduce identified caregiver burden. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions only a limited number of family members (n=5) were contacted and able to participate in the current study. Levels of patient needs were evaluated by head nurse by use of the Global Deterioration Scale. Family concerns were determined by having participants complete the Family Caregiver Well-Being Assessment results found that caretaker needs were not always consistent with the level of patient needs. Findings support the importance of the current agency program that helps identify and tailor staff interactions and education with family needs.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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