Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Oct 15, 2019
Date Accepted: Apr 21, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Effectiveness of a Two-Tier Family-Oriented Intervention in Enhancing Family Functioning and Care Capacity of Family Caregivers of Stoke Survivors: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Stroke brings about abrupt and immense changes to stroke families’ dynamics and responsibilities. Adaptation to new family roles is challenging, as support for caregivers of stoke survivors is minimal, presenting a major obstacle towards restoring family functioning and maximizing care capacity.
Objective:
This study aims to implement and examine the effectiveness of a two-tier family- oriented intervention involving care managers and volunteers for enhancing family functioning and care capacity of family caregivers of stroke survivors.
Methods:
This is a multicenter, two-armed, randomized, controlled study (intervention group, n=150; control group, n=150). Following case referral from hospital, family caregivers of stroke survivors and stroke survivors provide informed consent and undergo initial screening. Caregivers report significant caregiver burden, and/or depressive mood, and/or family dysfunctioning are randomly assigned to undergo two-tier family-oriented intervention (intervention group) or psychoeducation (control group). The primary outcome is the change in i) family role performance, ii) family caregiver conflict, iii) care management strategies, and iv) general family functioning from baseline to 2 weeks and 2 months after completion of intervention.
Results:
This study began in January 2017 and is being conducted at three participating facilities in Hong Kong.
Conclusions:
This study will examine the effectiveness of a two-tier family- oriented intervention in enhancing family functioning and care capacity of family caregivers of stroke survivors. Through this study, we expect that this intervention can fill the service gap in the current stroke care system and serves as an important basis on which future evidence-based programs supporting family caregivers of stroke survivors could develop. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03034330; https://ichgcp.net/clinical-trials-registry/NCT03034330
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.