2016 Volume 17 Issue 1 Pages 14-21
We examined the effect of home visiting and day rehabilitation facility service on primary caregivers from the perspective of health-related quality of life (QOL) to investigate the nature of rehabilitation at home services.
Rehabilitation was divided into home visit, day rehabilitation facility service, and combined rehabilitation. After ascertaining the characteristics of changes in SF-36 score from the start of rehabilitation to 6 months after starting rehabilitation, multiple comparisons were conducted to investigate the difference in scores among the three groups.
As a result, while primary caregivers maintained their “mental health (MH)” irrespective of the type of rehabilitation they used, their “physical functioning (PH)” did not improve, which suggested a possible link with exacerbated caregiving burden. Furthermore, day rehabilitation service is characterized by the time away from caregiving for the caregiver, which may contribute to improvement in “physical pain.” Items that were improved in the day rehabilitation service and combined rehabilitation groups were “overall sense of health (GH),” “social functioning (SF),” and “role functioning (RE),” indicating that the use of day rehabilitation service played an important role in the mental health of primary caregivers. A comparison of scores among the three groups revealed significant improvement in the combined rehabilitation group. Simultaneously providing home visit and day rehabilitation service to primary caregivers who feel “exhaustion and a lack of energy” and are “unable to ensure time for work or normal activities” is much more likely to have an effect.
Providing home visiting and day rehabilitation facility service is useful for improving the health-related QOL of the primary caregivers. It is thus important to provide rehabilitation by taking advantage of the characteristics of improvement resulting from the type of rehabilitation. Further, a multilateral rehabilitation system is anticipated following the improvement observed from combining the types of rehabilitation.
