Home visit to families of people with Alzheimer: experience of a mutual help group

Abstract

Objective: To report the experience of undergraduate students of the Physiotherapy and Nursing course, members of a Mutual Help Group, about home visits to the homes of three family caregivers of people with Alzheimer's. Experience report: The home visits aim to provide a moment of therapeutic listening and welcoming to the family caregiver of a person with Alzheimer's disease, and as a consequence, we get to know the caregivers' routine, making it possible to identify the negative impacts of overload in the sphere biopsychosocial. This action is developed through the extension project “Mutual Help Group integrating family members and caregivers of people with Alzheimer's Disease (GAM)” at the State University of Southwest Bahia, Campus Jequié, which welcomes and promotes the integration of the caregiver community. Final considerations: The visits enable the creation of an environment that enables the inclusion of the group in the caregiver's daily life, in addition, it improves the students' academic training, favoring them to develop skills to learn to deal with the community inserted in a context of plurality. Finally, it is concluded that the loneliness of care, the lack of support and adequate guidance for care actions increase the possibility of the caregiver becoming ill.