Effectiveness of an educational nursing intervention on caring ability and burden in family caregivers of patients with chronic non-communicable diseases. A preventive randomized controlled clinical trial

A preventive controlled clinical trial was conducted with two comparison groups (intervention and control) in 2017. The inclusion criteria were to be aged 18 or over, be the caregiver of a patient with a chronic non-communicable disease (NCD) and the time devoted to caring was at least three months. Caregivers with difficulties in communication and those who could not receive the whole intervention were excluded. To meet the selection criteria, 34 family caregivers of patients with NCD were selected, who were users of a private tertiary hospital in Bucaramanga (Colombia).

Randomization.
To assign the intervention, on behalf of the project coordination center, a co-researcher of this study randomized family caregivers in balanced blocks to either the control group or intervention group, by using a list of random numbers generated in Excel.

Intervention.
The intervention consisted of the application of a four-topic workshop aimed at improving the family caregiver ability on knowledge, courage and patience, using a booklet designed by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. This workshop was individually applied to each patient in a window of 3 hours at the hospital and was led by a nurse of the research team accompanied by a final year student of the nursing degree. The topics, objectives and activities are described in Table 1. Training related to the chronic pathology was provided to the control group, using educational support material designed by the research team. All participants of the control group were offered to have an intervention after the post-intervention surveys had been applied.