Prior to this study, from November, 2003 to December, 2004 for one years, having given counsel to family caregivers in rehabilitation medicine clinic, I observed that patients’ use of the formal social welfare services in virtue of hospitals had good influences on the adaptation of ones, and that families given social welfare counsel were relieved emotional burden owing to the increase of the will to rehabilitate. Therefore, I was able to think about the possibility and need of this study and now actually analyze the influence of medical social worker’s social support in hospital on burden on caregivers. Accordingly, the object of this study is to research on the actual condition of family that is under obligations to support stroke patients and charged of caregiving burden, to systematically analyze the functions of medical social workers and the factors of caregiving burden medical social workers can influence on, and then to seek for the reasonable social work policy in order to relieve the burden of caregivers. The analysis of the statistical survey says that the social support of medical social workers has the significant effect for caregivig burden of family caregiver.
That is, four social supports of the medical social worker (emotional support, informational support, material support, appraisal support) have the meaningful effect for the alleviation of all of six caregiving burdens (time-dependence burden, developmental burden, physical burden, social burden, emotional burden, financial burden).
Key Words: stroke, caregiver, caregiving, burden, social supports, medical social worker’s