Analysis on nursing competence and training needs of dementia caregivers in long-term care institutions

OBJECTIVE: It is aimed to investigate the nursing competence and corresponding influence factors of dementia caregivers in long-term care institutions of Tianjin and identify the training needs of caregivers. METHODS: In the cross-section survey of this study, 246 dementia caregivers were selected from 6 long-term care institutions in Tianjin as objects of study through convenient sampling. RESULTS: The scores for nursing competence of dementia caregivers were 140.28 ± 7.73, at a moderate level. Study findings that nursing competence of dementia caregivers were positively associated with the work experience (β = 0.115,P = 0.005), educational level (β = 0.333,P < 0.01), pervdceived health status (β = 0.108,P = 0.003) and training times within 1 year (β = 0.371,P < 0.01). Through the analysis, it is found that the training needs of dementia caregivers are inconsistent with the current situation in terms of content, methods and teachers. There are some problems in the training, such as unreasonable time, single mode and not deepening the understanding of the elderly with dementia. CONCLUSION: Long term care institutions shall arrange training no less than 12 times a year and evaluate training needs regularly to improve training effect. Providing online and offline training and adding more specialized contents like case analysis, employing experts in the field of dementia to teach courses.