The Impact of Spiritual Care Education on the Self-Efficacy of the Family Caregivers of Elderly People with Alzheimer’s Disease

BACKGROUND: Caring for people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease is stressful. Family caregivers of these people usually experience physical and mental burnout and lose their efficacy in doing care-related activities. The present study aimed to examine the impacts of spiritual care education on self-efficacy of the family caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease. METHODS: This study was conducted from October to December 2015 by using a two-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design. In total, 60 family caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease were recruited and randomly allocated to the intervention and control groups. A spiritual care educational intervention was implemented for the caregivers in the intervention group. The data were collected before and three weeks after the study intervention by using the ten-item General Self Efficacy scale. The study data were analyzed in SPSS using Chi-square and independent t-test. RESULTS: Before the study intervention, the means of pretest self-efficacy scores in the intervention and control groups were 29.80±4.80 and 28.39±6.41, respectively. There was no significant difference between the groups regarding the mean score of self-efficacy (P=0.36). After the study, these two scores changed to 32.73±4.75 and 27.85±5.98, respectively. However, after the intervention, the mean score of self-efficacy in the intervention group was significantly higher than the control group (P=0.002). CONCLUSION: Spiritual care can enhance the self-efficacy of the family caregivers of people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. Therefore, care providers are recommended to use such spirituality-based interventions for empowering family caregivers.