Date of Award

Spring 4-21-2025

Document Type

Capstone

Degree Name

Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD)

Department

Occupational Therapy

First Advisor

Steven M. Gerardi, PhD, OTD, MSS, OTR, Doctoral Capstone Coordinator

Second Advisor

Eric Hicks, PhD, OTR, Interim Program Director

Medical Subject Headings

Caregivers, Occupational therapy, Family, Health education, Dementia

Abstract

Informal caregivers (care partners) are people, such as family members, who provide care to those who cannot care for themselves, including people with dementia (PwD). Care partners assist PwD in their daily occupations, often without training. Caring for PwD can lead to emotional, physical, financial, and occupational challenges for care partners. Occupational therapy (OT) has a role to play in the care of PwD. However, if clinicians do not operate from a dyadic model, care partners’ needs may be overlooked. Problem: Although addressing the care partner dyad is important to the delivery of OT, the role of OT in the care of informal caregivers of PwD is not well articulated in the OT literature, which makes it difficult for OT practitioners to provide optimal care. Clarifying this concept can improve the delivery of OT services for the care partner-PWD dyad. Purpose: The purpose of this project was to conduct a concept analysis on the role of OT in the care of informal caregivers of PwD. Results: The role of OT with informal caregivers of PwD is to identify barriers to participation and challenges to effective occupational performance with the care partner-PWD dyad and to implement interventions to enable participation and enhance performance. The key attributes of this role are a) viewing the care partner-PWD dyad as the “client,” b) taking a dyadic approach to the OT process, c) providing caregiver education and training, d) addressing home safety and environmental modification, e) long term planning, and f) interdisciplinary care coordination.

Comments

Capstone project submitted to the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Occupational Therapy

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