Profile of elderly people caregivers and analysis of the domains of a workload evaluation scale

Objective: To identify the sociodemographic profile of the elderly caregivers and to evaluate their responses to the domains of a workload scale. Methodology: This is a cross-sectional descriptive study of a quantitative approach, where it was used to analyze the domains and their items on the scale of ZARIT BURDEN, the sample was 228 forms, applied to caregivers of the elderly enrolled in the Family Health Program Sanitary District IV, having as inclusion criteria age equal or superior to 28 years old with at least 10 years living together with the elderly. Results: The study showed that the profile of caregivers of the elderly has a prevalence of female, age between 50 and 60 years old, with elementary education, married civil status or stable union with social class D-E. As to the analysis of the domains of the scale, it was seen that there was a prevalence of the response never in the impact domain in the given care, as far as the domain interpersonal relationship was concerned, there was a predominance of the answer never, except for the penultimate item that always had as answer, of the domain expectations with the care, the answer that prevailed was never with the exception of the last two items that had the answer always. The variation of the responses validated all items as protectors of the caregiver's workload. Conclusion: This study showed the importance of the use of scales and the analysis of the domains and their isolated items to reflect each factor and its impact on the caregiver’s workload and together with the knowledge of the profile of the caregivers of the elderly gave rise to discussions about this theme