Stroke Patient Family Caregiver’s Needs: Systematic Review

Aims: The aim of this systematic review is to analyze the studies investigating the needs of stroke patients’ family caregivers. Material and Methods: The framework of this study is consisted of 2359 articles found by scanning of the databases including EBSCOhost, Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, Web of Science, ULAKBİM and Turkey Citation Index. During the scanning, the articles that were published in last 10 years (January 2004-December 2014), in Turkish or English and in full text were chosen for the study by using the key words of “stroke”, “cerebral stroke”, “cerebrovascular stroke”, “caregivers”, “family caregivers”, “need”, “needs”. Of these articles, 16 articles meeting the inclusion criteria constituted the study sample. Results: The average age of the caregivers were 31-90, 46.2%-% 92.5% of them were female, 7.5%-53.8% of them were male and 20%-83% of them were found to be a spouse/partner of the patient. Seven studies were qualitative, eight studies were quantitative, one study was mixed type. Needs of the caregivers of stroke patients were grouped as educational, emotional, economic, social, instrumental and care-related. Conclusion It is advisable to determine the top priority needs and to develop programs towards meeting these needs.