Measuring Caregiver in Spinal Cord Injury

This chapter aims to describe and evaluate the assessment tools used for evaluating caregiving in people with SCI, through a systematic review of scientific literature. The systematic review was conducted in line with COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments (COSMIN) on PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, and Web of Science. After removing duplicates, 3333 papers were screened. Of these, 476 were included in this systematic review. Among these, four papers were considered for this chapter. Results show four assessment tools that evaluate the caregiving area for persons with SCI. The scales evaluate mainly caregiver burden and family needs. These are the Caregiver Burden Scale (CBS), the Caregiver Burden Index (CBI), the Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview Short Form (ZBI), and the Family Needs Questionnaire (FNQ). Specifically, CBS assesses the subjective impact of the burden of taking care of people with chronic diseases. The ZBI assesses the tension perceived by the caregiver.