ABSTRACT
Purpose: We aimed to assess the family caregivers' level of knowledge and attitudes about Parkison's disease (PD), identify factors affecting their knowledge, evaluate their quality of life (QoL) and factors influencing it and to define the effect of PD on activities of daily living (ADLs) of PD patients. Method: We developed and validated a questionnaire to assess the level of knowledge and attitudes of family caregivers toward PD, effects of PD on caregivers' QoL as well as its effects on activities of daily living (ADLs) of patients from the caregivers' perspective. A scoring system was utilized and SPSS was used to evaluate the differences in responses between the groups; p < 0.05 indicated statistical significance. Results: 69 caregivers and their corresponding patients were included in the study. Family caregivers had a low level of knowledge, as reflected by a mean score of 3.45 out of 8. However, 62.3% were aware of all medications used by their patients. Additionally, the level of knowledge was associated with caregivers' gender as 57.1% of the female caregivers had medium PD knowledge scores while 58.5% of the male had low scores (p = 0.038). The level of knowledge was also associated with daily caregiving hours as only 44.5% of caregivers whom spending 0-5 h/day had medium and high knowledge scores while greater proportions with same scoring levels were found among those providing care > 5 h/day (75.0% in > 5-10 hrs; 52.4% in > 10-24 hrs; p = 0.024). Most caregivers confirmed their QoL had declined, yet the male caregivers had better QoL than females (p = 0.026). Longer caregiving time was associated with decline (p = 0.016) and severe effect on QoL of caregivers (p = 0.04). Conclusion: Caregivers of PD patients had a low level of knowledge. Female caregivers had significantly higher level of PD knowledge than their male counterparts. Low level of PD knowledge was significantly associated with shorter caregiving time per day. Longer caregiving time was significantly associated with a decline in caregivers' QoL. Increasing awareness and knowledge among caregivers is necessary to ensure better treatment outcomes and improve the QoL of both caregivers and patients.
