台灣失智症病患與家屬對於輔具的接受度

Abstract

Introduction/Background: We are entering an aged society. And that comes with an increase in incidence of dementia. The subsequent social economical implication cannot be taken lightly. Management of dementia requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Advanced assistive technology (AT) has been used in helping the patients and families with dementia to deal with cognitive, safety, communications, or psychological issues. We are interested to find out what Taiwanese families and patients with early stage dementia think of AT and their acceptance or concerns regarding to AT. And what are the important factors in determining the usefulness of AT. A professional care worker often became the solution to patient’s problem. Nevertheless there might be some concerns; hence, we enquire about patients and families’ thoughts on hiring a 24 hour helper. To answer these questions, we designed our study based on the grounded theory Methodology: A serial interviews were done to collect data with concurrent analysis in a systematic manner. The inclusion participants are patients who have been diagnosed with mild dementia or very mild dementia, and do not have severe physical disability that require a constant aid from caregiver, being wheel chair bound or bed ridden. A total of 15 patients and families members were recruited. Results/Conclusion: Overall, the Asian family structure with multiple family members living in the same house hold helps the patient to cope with dementia much better. The acceptance of assistive technology in Taiwan is low for the very mild and mild dementia patients but well perceived by patient’s young family members. For the extrovert type of patients, autonomy and privacy appears to be an issue, but less for introvert type of patients. In designing an AT, one needs to consider factors such as simplicity, automaticity and familiarity. AT that provides companionship could be an interesting area to explore. One might resort to a 24 hour helper when AT fails. A 24 hour helper may appear helpful, but some problems may be considered such as patient-caregiver incompatibility, trust issue or stigma of being ill. These problems make temporary patient care a potential market to be explored.