Stroke caregivers share ABCs of caring

Abstract

New stroke caregivers (N = 36) participated in a Web-based intervention that provided support and education and included exchanging e-mail messages in a discussion group. A male spousal caregiver posted a poem in his final message at the end of 1 year of participation in this discussion group. He used each letter of the alphabet to choose a word that represented a theme for what he had discovered while caring for his wife. A secondary analysis project examined narrative data from all caregivers' e-mails to see whether support existed for the word themes in the ABCs poem. 2,148 e-mails were read and examined using content analysis to get a sense of the meaning of the content, and then key words were identified that matched each of the poem's word themes. Other caregivers' e-mail examples verified all 26 word themes of the ABCs poem. Nurses can use these themes when providing education and support interventions to stroke caregivers new to their new role.