Impact of Virtual-based Resilience Training on Perceived Stress in Family Caregivers of COVID-19 Patients

Stress is a psychological trauma that the family caregivers of COVID-19 patients may experience that can impair the caregivers’ positive adaptation to stressful experiences, i.e., their resilience, leading to a decline in the quality of patient care. This study aimed to determine the effect of virtual-based resilience training on perceived stress levels among family caregivers of COVID-19 patients.

Twenty family caregivers of COVID-19 patients discharged on the same day from 22nd-Bahman Hospital of Khaf were recruited by census and assigned randomly to experimental or control groups in a quasi-experimental study. Before and after the intervention, data on the caregivers’ demographic characteristics, resilience, and perceived stress were collected using electronic questionnaires. One month of training was given to the experimental group via the WhatsApp application. Data were analyzed by SPSS-22 using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Levine’s, and analysis of covariance tests. The level of significance was set to α = 0.05.

In this study, 20 family caregivers of COVID-19 patients were allocated to experimental (4 men and 6 women) and control (3 men and 7 women) groups. Post-test scores for perceived stress (F = 290.34, P <0.001) and resilience (F = 799.794, P <0.001) revealed a significant difference between the experimental and control groups.

The results demonstrated that virtual-based resilience training is an effective method for minimizing perceived stress and enhancing the resilience of COVID-19 patients’ family caregivers.