Older adults caring for other older adults: a study on burden and frailty

Abstract

A treatment task can appear, without any prior preparation or support, resulting in an intense burden, especially for older adult caregivers. Scholars claim that this psychological tension can culminate in the development of frailty. Both burden and frailty can affect the quality of life of those involved and interfere with the quality of care offered, especially in contexts of high social vulnerability. With early identification of conditions, it may be possible to reduce spending on health services and improve the quality of these people's life. Objective: to analyze a relationship between the burden and frailty of elderly caregivers taking care of older adults. Method: cross-sectional and quantitative study, will be accomplished in a city in the interior of São Paulo. Approach a larger study, qualify elderly people aged 60 or over, registered in USFs that take care of the elderly (n ± 120). Candidates for inclusion will be: to be elderly's primary caregivers; to be a family member of the elderly cared for; informally perform the care task; living with elderly people, and be registered in a USF inserted in a context of high social vulnerability. Those who have communication difficulties due to hearing and/ or visually impaired seriously will be excluded. The data will be collected at the home of the elderly's caregiver, from January to April / 2021, by trained students, with the following instruments: questionnaire for the characterization of the elderly caregiver and the elderly's context, Zarit overload inventory and the frailty phenotype studied by Linda Fried. Descriptive and correlational analyzes will be performed. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test will be used to check the adherence or not of the normal distribution of variables and to define the use of parametric or non-parametric tests. The significance level adopted will be 5% (p <0.05).