Challenges in caregiving and creative solutions: Using technology to facilitate caring for a relative with dementia

摘要

Borrowing principles from total quality management and the emerging consumer-satisfaction movement in the field of ageing, we explored how technology might assist family members who are caring at home for a relative with dementia. In Phase 1, focus groups with a total of 26 current and former caregivers revealed that as caregivers and the relatives for whom they care struggle to maintain continuity of roles, relationships, and lifestyles, safety is a key concern. Despite the limited use by some caregivers of “low-tech” tools (e.g., door alarms, intercoms), caregivers lack a comprehensive system to enhance their relatives’ safety. In Phase 2, we identified an Internet-based monitoring system to address caregivers’ major concerns. In Phase 3, focus groups with eight caregivers evaluated the system that was identified in Phase 2. Results suggest that affordable technologies exist to assist family caregivers, and that these caregivers were amenable to the use of these technologies. Earlier versions of this paper were distributed as an Ohio Long-Term Care Research Project Report (October, 2002), and presented at the International Gerontechnology Conference (November, 2002) and the Annual Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America (November, 2002).