Kusambiza-Kiingi A.1, Maleka D.2, Ntsiea V.1
1University of the Witwatersrand, Therapeutic Sciences, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2University of Limpopo, Health Sciences, Polokwane, South Africa
Background: Stroke survivors are discharged home before they are functionally independent and return home with activity limitations that would not be manageable without a caregiver.
Purpose: To determine stroke survivors' levels of community reintegration, quality of life, satisfaction with the physiotherapy services and the level of caregiver strain at community health centres within the Johannesburg area.
Methods: This was a cross sectional study using the following outcome measures: Maleka Stroke Community Reintegration Measure, Stroke-specific quality of life scale, Caregiver strain index and Physical therapy patient satisfaction questionnaire.
Results: Hundred and eight stroke survivors and 45 caregivers participated in this study. The average age of the stroke survivors was 54 years (SD=12.73) and fifty eight percent (n = 62) had moderate to full community reintegration. They were happy with physiotherapy services but not with parking availability and cost of services. The quality of life was poor with the lowest scores for energy and highest scores for vision and language domains. Twenty five (55%) of the caregivers were strained. A positive correlation was found between community reintegration and: satisfaction with services (r = 0.27, p 0.0001) and quality of life (r = 0.51, p 0.0001). A negative correlation was found between community reintegration and caregiver strain (r = -0.37, p 0.0001).
Conclusion(s): Most stroke survivors are reintegrated into their communities except in the areas of work and education, have poor quality of life and most of their caregivers are strained, however they are satisfied with physiotherapy services.
Implications: To establish levels of community reintegration in the CHCs in the Johannesburg area to give an overview of the stroke survivors in these areas. Community reintegration results will guide the focus of future rehabilitation sessions to ensure improvement in relating factors. The stroke survivors satisfaction with physiotherapy services will serve as a gauge to assess whether treatment is adequate as well as give clues as to where the therapists in these areas can improve their services.
Caregiver strain results will allow therapists to be able to look out for specific concerns that caregivers have that may lead them to being strained once the patient returns home. Results of caregivers levels of strain will allow health professionals in these areas to adjust their family home programmes to enable health professionals to develop programmes to help caregivers with factors that contribute the most towards their strain. Knowledge of the stroke survivors levels of quality of life will give therapists an indication of whether more needs to be done with regards to addressing quality of life issues and to also prevent depression.
Funding acknowledgements: N/A
Topic: Neurology: stroke
Ethics approval: Ethical clearance was obtained through the Human Research Ethics Committee (Medical) with reference number M140452
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
