Assessing caregiving burden among primary caregivers in a medical intensive care unit setup: Cross-sectional study

Caregiver burden in caring patients in intensive care unit (ICU) settings are stressful and challenging place. Caregivers also play very important role in doctor-patient relationship. In India, there is a skewed trend in doctor-patient relationship. Without addressing caregiver's psychological issues, we may not able to deliver good medical services. "Caregiver burden in primary caregivers of patients admitted to medical ICU (MICU) was measured.

Its cross-section observational study. We collected the information from total of 100 caregivers whose patient got admitted to MICU. We took only one caregiver. We administered socio-demographic data, Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview (ZBI) for assessing burden in caregivers.

The mean age of the caregivers was 38 years with 66% males were being primary caregivers and mean age of education was 8.61 years. The mean duration of patient stay in hospital was 4.67 days with range of 4-18 days. Mean duration of illness in patient was 466 days with range of 4 days to 10 years. Mean score caregivers burden as per ZBI was 5.10 with range of 0-25. Thirty-five percentage of caregiver were felt caregiving was the burden. Correlation analysis shows ZBI negative relationship with caregivers' age and education and patients total duration of illness. There was a positive co-relationship with the duration of ICU admission.

Higher burden was observed in caregivers and caregivers felt more burden if patients stays longer duration in ICU. More research is needed in this area.