Published Paper Details:

ABSTRACT Background: Dementia affect the caregivers as much as the patient or more. This causes disruptions in family routines and wellness of the family. Hence, it is strongly recommended for the caregivers to seek immediate help from professionals or experts in dementia care to gain further educational information on how to care for your loved ones and also on the various types of care that may be required. It is essential that care-givers should have appropriate knowledge and should be able to analyze needs of the dementia patient at home in order to make independent decisions regarding day to day care, to assist them in life process as well as to preserve their own mental health. Methodology: A pre experimental method was undertaken where 100 caregivers of dementia patient visiting selected outpatient departments in tertiary care hospital of metropolitan city were recruited as sample by non- probability convenient sampling method. Using structured questionnaire for knowledge (30 questions) data was collected. Data analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics to describe and show the association between knowledge and the variables. Result: The study resulted that in pre-test 67% of the caregivers had poor knowledge (score 0-10) and 33% of caregivers had average knowledge (score 11-20) while in post-test 1% of the caregivers had poor knowledge (score 0-10), 37% of them had average knowledge (score 11-20) and 62% of them had good knowledge (score 21-30) regarding dementia and its home care. The comparisons of the pre- test and post- test means of the knowledge were done by the paired t test. Average knowledge score in pre-test was 9.3 which increased to 21.3 in post-test. t-value for this test was 47.6 with 99 degrees of freedom. Corresponding p-value was small (less than 0.05) the null hypothesis is rejected. Knowledge score in post-test was significantly high as compared to that in pre-test. Conclusion: The knowledge among caregivers regarding dementia and its home care improved significantly after an awareness program regarding dementia and its home care and it is recommended that frequent awareness programmes has to be arranged for caregivers of dementia patients.