Background and objective: The holistic care of treatment by multidisciplinary is a necessesity for care giver to provide good care to some patients with cleft lip and cleft palate for sending to the hospital and follow them up. The factor of the care givers are, age, gender, education, marital status, income, member of family, relationship, knowledge and awareness of source of help, timing for taking them to the hospital are so important for the success rate of treatment. The objective of this study was to survey the said factors.
Methods: Descriptive study of 242 care givers of patients with cleft lip /cleft palate by questionnaires were done and data were analyzed using frequencies, percent, medium, Pearsons product moment correlation coefficient.
Results: The response rate of the questionnaires was 57%. The mean average age a gender were of the important care giver was 33 years which 85% were female. Most respondents had only grade school education(43%). Marital status was predominantly married (90 %) and income was under 5,000 Baht/month (51 %). Family size was between 5 and 8 persons (52%) and included extended family (69%). The mean knowledge score was 3.6 and the perception of sources of help was 3.3. Patients had cheiloplasty at the age of 3-4 months (61%) and palatoplasty at the age of 9-18 months (72%). The age of care giver was found to associate with period of treatment (p=0.006).
Conclusion: The caregiver is so important in that one must look after the patient for a long time after surgeries. The age factor of caregiver in 33 years to make good decision, who could learn and take care to the best quality and well being of them.
Keywords: Cleft lip and palate, Care giver, knowledge, perception source to help.
