Assuming a nighttime situation in a dementia group home, assistance operations were performed under the condition of 1 assistant, transfer from a supine position to the floor with full assistance, and a low bed (height = 0.4 m). Assistance operations were performed under combinations of 4 conditions: starting assistance from the head side, starting assistance from the foot side, female assistants with male evacuees, and male assistants with female evacuees. The assistance time was analyzed by dividing it into three operation phases, and it was found that the operation time of female assistants was longer. Further, when assistance was started from the head side, it took longer to pull the evacuee to the front of the bed, whereas when assistance was started from the foot side, it took longer to lower the evacuee from the bed to the floor. Since the purpose of the assistance operation was to evacuate evacuees from a fire, the experimental results and techniques of shortening the assistance time were examined. Considering that assistance may be given by people who do not have much strength, we showed the possibility of utilizing tools to reduce friction during the operation, such as slide sheets, to help pull an evacuee on the bed, to the front of the bed. As regards the assistance operation of lowering an evacuee from the bed to the floor, a technique was suggested of holding the evacuee's feet, pulling the buttocks to the front of the bed, and after placing the feet on the floor, lowering the evacuee onto the floor from the buttocks, followed by the waist, back, head and neck.Index Terms-evacuation technique, people unable to self-evacuate, dementia group home
Pages 37-43 37 www.ijntr.org Abstract-Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neuromuscular disease in which muscle strength and motor function decrease with the progress of the disease. As the decreased motor function is associated with poorer communication abilities in ALS patients, supporting methods are needed to enable better communication according to their residual capacity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare features of the "transparent character board" and the "mouth-shape character", which are simple communication methods for patients with ALS and other diseases in which patients have difficulty in speaking or writing. Healthy subjects role-played the patient (the patient's role) and the caregiver (the caregiver`s role). The trials were conducted to express the intention of the patient using Hiragana characters (The Japanese alphabet) to the caregiver using 3 communication aids: a "transparent character board", the "mouth-shape characters" method, and an "electronic character boards" with voice output set as the control. Each trial was recorded with an eye-tracking device worn by the caregiver and a video camera, and the communication process was measured. The transparent character board communication requires the board as a tool. This method can be used for speedy communication if the environment allows the patient and caregiver to spend much time learning the operation process. The mouth-shape character method requires no tools for communication. The ease of the method makes it applicable even when the relationship between the patient and caregiver is not so long.
Neuromuscular diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) progressively decrease voluntary motor function, gradually causing communication difficulties. Despite disease progression, a transparent communication board can be used for an extended period as one of the means of communication. It is a transparent plate on which characters including letters, numbers, and symbols are displayed, for caregivers to read intentions of patients. Nonetheless, conventional transparent communication boards have the following problems: 1. the caregiver needs to position each character on the board so that the target character can be aligned linearly between the caregiver's eyes and the patient's eyes; 2. caregivers need to memorize or record words and sentences, because intentions of a patient are read on a character basis; and 3. the arrangement of characters on the board is fixed. The objective of this study was to develop an electronic transparent communication board (device) to solve the problems of conventional transparent communication boards and evaluate and verify its effect. The device included two tablets that were connected with each other via Wi-Fi so that the caregiver could confirm the voluntary movements of the patient by the video images taken by the attached cameras and enter the characters on the screen. Among the three problems of the conventional transparent communication board, the adjustment of the location of the transparent communication board seemed to become easier, because the device can be operated without aligning the visual line of the caregiver with that of the patient. It took longer to operate the prepared device than the conventional transparent communication board, but it is expected that the negative impacts caused by the delays can be reduced, if the communication speed and tablet performance are improved. Characters were considered to become entered more easily with the prepared system than with the approaches depending on memories and notes.
The "mouth-shape character" is one of the communication means of ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) patients and caregivers. Although this means allows communication between the patient and the caregiver without using any tools, it is a burden on caregivers to utter speech sounds and record characters. The purpose of this study is to develop a support system for speech utterances and character recordings in communication via the mouth-shape character method. The prototype support system (proto-system) consisted mainly of an electric character board and a speech voice recognition module. Using the proto-system, the communication experiments were conducted by healthy subjects role-playing both the patient and the caregiver, and the system operability was evaluated. A control experiment was performed using the conventional mouth-shape character method and the results using these two methods were compared. Although the communication speed in the proto-system was slightly inferior to that of the mouth-shape character method, the accuracy of the confirmed character recordings by the former method was high, indicating the possibility of reducing the burden on caregivers. In addition, since speech recognition adapted to the caregiver's voice can be used as an input trigger, both hands of the caregiver remain free, and the potential for a reduction in the caregiving workload was obtained.
Many residents of elderly facilities such as dementia group homes and special elderly nursing homes require evacuation with assistance during a fire, and the number of caregivers is often limited. The purpose of this study is to develop an evacuation device that enables evacuation using the stairs for wheelchair users living on the second and higher floors in elderly facilities and welfare facilities with assistance by just one caregiver and without the use of an electric motor. The developed machine was provided with a structure that includes a carriage that supports driving, braking, overall load, and a backrest frame that holds and fixes the wheelchair and is operated by a caregiver. A staircase descent experiment was conducted and the results showed that the total operation time was 92.18 seconds on average, which almost achieved the target time of 90 seconds. The result of a questionnaire survey showed that respondents had positive opinions on the necessity of equipment that can evacuate persons in wheelchairs by descending stairs and some said they need to introduce such equipment into their facilities. The lock of the developed machine was improved, which reduced the wheelchair mounting process time by an average of 9.88 seconds. The total operation time was 49.42 seconds on average, which made it possible for the evacuation time to be conducted in under one minute. Further improvements will be carried out leading to greater practical use.
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