Introduction:

Based on nursing needs, community work can be carried out following organized guidelines, taking into account that they are associated to health promotion.

Objective:

To design a nursing practice guide for attending the caregivers of dementia patients.

Methods:

In this technological development research, we worked with a population of 80 main caregivers and five nurses from the Mental Health department of Marianao Municipality, Havana, in the period 2016-2017. Document review and the survey were used as techniques, together with the Zarit scale and consults to experts.

Results:

The caregivers were mainly the children, belonged to the female sex, were housewives, with university education, and all had experienced anxiety and depression. The first three human nursing needs affected were communication, self-care, sleep, and rest, more than half the group presented intense overburden. The nursing staff was identified to requires knowledge for attending the caregiver, which justified the guide preparation.

Conclusions:

Intense overburden and affected nursing needs were observed, as described by Virginia Henderson for the main caregivers, which allows health promotion and disease prevention actions to be carried out through the nursing practice guide, which was validated by experts.

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