A COMPARATIVE STUDY TO ASSESS THE KNOWLEDGE REGARDING GERIATRIC CARE AMONG CARE TAKERS OF ELDERLY PEOPLE AT SELECTED RURAL AND URBAN FAMILIES OF VADODARA CITY

Abstract

Introduction: Ageing is normal, universal and an inevitable change which taken place with the best of nutrition and health care. It involves all aspects of the organism and is largely characterized by a decline in the functional efficiency.Over the twenty-year period from 1950-1970, the proportion of people in the populationaged 65 and over was 5%. In 1980 this age group began to increases, the government has taken a lot of incentives to achieve the goal in terms of preventive geriatric to achieving the active ageing. Material and methods: This Comparative  study was conducted to assess the knowledge of care takers regarding geriatric care among care takers of elderly people in selected rural and urban families of Vadodara city with nonexperimental descriptive research design used to achieve the goal of the study by using instrument includes, Demographical data and structured knowledge questionnaires, followed to carried  out a structured interview scheduleamong 100 care takers (N=50 rural ,N=50 urban ) those are selected by non probability purposive sampling technique. The collected data was tabulated and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The findings of the study revealed that, the  majority of care takers of rural families have 56% inadequate knowledge, 28 % care takers have moderate knowledge, and only 16% caretakers have adequate knowledge whereas the majority of 46% care takers of urban families have moderate knowledge ,36% caretaker have care takers have adequate knowledge and only very least 18% caretakers have inadequate knowledge  so there is  significance difference in rural and urban care takers knowledge regarding geriatric care. Conclusion: The study conclude thatin rural families majority of caretakers have inadequate knowledge whereas in urban families'majority of caretakers havemoderate knowledge .So caretakers of urban families have much higher knowledge as compared to rural families related to geriatric care.