A Study on Evaluations of Living Spaces by Caregivers for Elderly People

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2017:242:233-240.

Abstract

Caregivers who provide nursing-care visits to the elderly learn to notice changes in the physical and mental functions of residents by looking for signs of disorder in living spaces and changes in the orderliness of living spaces. In this research, to understand what draws caregiver attention and how they evaluate them, 15 caregivers are interviewed and asked to evaluate images of 33 living spaces. The results show variances in evaluations concerning the degree of clutter of living spaces even among experienced caregivers, but that it is possible to classify the degree of clutter using a two-axis scale.

Keywords: Caregivers for the elderly; clutter; environment evaluation and assessment; home care and monitoring.

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Attention
  • Caregivers*
  • Dementia*
  • Housing*
  • Humans