Clinical-Demographic Variables and Compliance with Home Programme among Nigerian Informal Caregivers of Children with Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

Background and Purpose of Study: Prescription of home exercise programme is a common component of physiotherapy intervention in managing children with Cerebral Palsy (CP). Home programme has been shown to accelerate the success of rehabilitation intervention and improve motor functions in the patient. Many factors related to the caregiver are thought to influence their compliance with home programmes. Such factors have however not been studied among Nigerian informal caregivers of children with cerebral palsy. Identification of such factors may help clinicians spot patients at risk of non-compliance and suggest methods to reduce the impact of these limiting factors thereby improving compliance with prescribed home programmes. This study was carried out to highlight clinical and demographic factors associated with compliance with home programme among informal caregivers of Nigerian children with cerebral palsy.
Methods: Forty-seven consecutively recruited informal caregivers that had been bringing their children/wards consistently for physiotherapy at selected hospitals in Ibadan for at least 6 months preceding this study constituted the study sample. A validated questionnaire was used to obtain information on the selected clinico-demographic variables and assess compliance with home programme. Compliance was rated as one of the following: “1-2 times per week”, “3-4 times per week”, “5-6 times per week” and “Greater than 6 times per week”. These figures were then interpreted as “Sometimes”, “When time permits”, “Always” and “Regularly” respectively. Data were summarised using descriptive statistics while Chisquare test at 0.05 alpha level was used for the inferential statistic.
Results: 51.1% of the caregivers carried out prescribed home programme regularly. There was no significant association between any of the selected clinico-demographic variables and the level of compliance of the caregivers.
Conclusions: About half of the informal caregivers of children with cerebral palsy carried out home programme regularly. This has clinical significance in physiotherapy practice with respect to total management of children with cerebral palsy. It is worthy of note that no clinic-demographic variable of the caregivers determined their compliance. The study sample size calls for cautious in generalisation of the findings from this study.