The vision for this blog is to create a community of harmonious professionals across the care continuum who encourage each other in exploring digital media as a way to support businesses and families dealing with elder care.
Written on February 2nd, 2011 by tasha
Over the next two weeks we are running a series on family caregiver receptivity to technology solutions.
Check out our factoids on Facebook and subscribe to our periodic e-notes to receive my full analysis of a report on family caregivers and technology released by the National Alliance for Caregiving. Based on the online responses of 1000 technology-using family caregivers, the report looks at their interest and perceived barriers to 12 different categories of technology that could help with caregiving activities:
I was surprised at some of the results. I have worked with family caregivers over the last 15 years and was not aware of some of the misconceptions they seem to hold about technology. And I was in some ways surprised to discover who was most receptive to hi tech solutions.
In this blogpost, I’d like to share the tech categories family caregivers are LEAST likely adopt. (Let’s see if we can save you some mistakes in tech investment right from the beginning!) These are the solutions that were perceived to have many obstacles with not much in the way of perceived benefits.
Want a fun activity? Take our quiz to see how closely you can guess what family caregivers identified as the top barriers to technology adoption.
The “big losers” were:
By “losers,” I mean that less than 50% of respondents thought the technology would be helpful, yet more than 50% identified barriers that would prevent them from trying it.
What did surprise me was the next finding: passive movement monitoring had the highest proportion of family caregivers reporting barriers to adoption. Organizations such as Intel, and MIT’s AgeLab, have invested strongly in cupboard and door sensor devices that can monitor traffic patterns in the home and alert concerned others (family members, or a paid monitoring service) when the medicine cabinet has not been opened all morning, or there are frequent visits to the bathroom indicating a possible urinary tract infection. Other such services include a video camera transmitting the bottom 12″ of the living space so monitors can be alerted if the resident falls. Even though 58% of family caregivers thought such systems would be helpful, for this particular technology, they were concerned about price, care recipient resistance, and the potential loss of dignity, independence and privacy.
The altruism here was intriguing to me. Concern about falls, or medication mismanagement, is a huge source of family caregiver stress. I was surprised to see how many family members (28% of respondents) identified concern about loss of dignity and independence as a barrier that would prevent them from trying one of these technologies. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Even though the alternative (no monitoring) makes for more stress on their part, this is a classic example of the selflessness of those who identify as family caregivers…The unsung heroes.
(Now we need someone to do a study of tech-using elders to find out what, if any, initial resistance they had and what benefits shifted them from pre-contemplation—not thinking about using such a system—through contemplation, decision and action. Let’s learn more about the care recipient’s barriers and see what happy tech-users can do to help manufacturers refine the technology and remove those obstacles.)
The next group of caregiving technologies fell in the category of moderate helpfulness but moderate perceived barriers.
For these, just over 50% of family caregivers felt they would be helpful, and just under 50% identified barriers to adoption. This makes them worthy of consideration, but not worthy of top attention.
Our full analysis of the report will come out in next week’s e-note. Subscribe to get the news! In it we will discuss the “winners,” those technologies that are considered helpful by more than 50% of family caregivers and have few, or at least a reasonable proportion of respondents identifying barriers. What’s surprising is how misinformed they are about the barriers. There are many free technology options. Lots of opportunity there.
What is your experience of family caregiver resistance/receptivity to tech solutions?
