Abstract
Background: Family caregivers had heavy burden and a lot of great responsibilities toward their clients using vacuum wound therapy.
Aim of Study: To asses knowledge and practice of family caregiver for clients using vacuum wound therapy for infected limb surgical wound.
Material and Methods: Design: A descriptive research design.
Setting: Out patient emergency plastic surgical clinic which affiliated to emergency hospital 185 at Cairo university hospital.
The Study Sample: A convenient sample of 61 family caregivers and their (61) clients used vacuum wound therapy were included in the study from August 2017 to March 2018. Tool for data collection: One tool "Clients and family caregivers a Structured interview questionnaire" which divided to four parts. Part (I): Demographic characteristics of the family caregivers and clients. Part (II): Medical history of clients and home environment. Part (III): Family caregiver knowledge about vacuum wound therapy part (IV): Family caregiver practice about vacuum wound therapy. The total knowledge and practice scores for questionnaires are 100.
Results: 42.6% of family caregivers age from 20 to less than 30 years and 73 .7% of them were male. The result revealed that positive statistically significant relations between total knowledge of family caregivers and their age, p=0.02. And education level, p=0.07. There was a positive statistical significant total practice and their job, p=0.08.
Conclusion: The study concluded that, 51% of them had unsatisfactory total knowledge. Total practice 53% of them had satisfactory score while 47% of them had unsatisfactory score of total practices regarding vacuum wound therapy.
Recommendations: The study recommended before appli-cation therapy, knowledge should be developed for family caregiver about definition, uses, benefits and initiation of therapy Improve practice of family caregiver to manage therapy through demonstration and training on safe handling of infectious and hazardous waste are critical to prevent cross contamin ation.