The overall purpose of this proposed study is to identify, describe, and analyze the experiences of caregivers managing the chronic pain of older persons with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). This is the first study in a program of nursing research designed to enhance the caregiving situation through development of assessment and intervention strategies that will improve the chronic pain management of elderly with AD.
Specific aims for this proposal are to: a) describe how a caregiver develops the knowledge that the elder with AD is experiencing chronic pain, b) identify intervention strategies used by caregivers in managing the chronic pain of elders with AD, and c) analyze how the trajectory of these strategies change as the status of the care receiver changes over time. Because there is limited nursing knowledge in this area, a qualitative design is proposed. An intensive interview approach will be used to generate rich, detailed descriptions of caregivers' experiences. For the purposes of this study, caregivers are the primary informants and will include adult children or spouses of the care receiver who have been self-identified as the primary caregiver. Elderly care receivers are identified as those persons over the age of 65 who have a diagnosis of AD. As self-identification of pain may not be possible in these person, the caregiver will identify chronic pain in the care receiver. The resulting data will guide the analysis; analysis of the data will be an ongoing process and will occur throughout data collection. The data will be read and reread in an attempt to identify themes, concepts and categories within the data.
