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Following a COVID-19 outbreak in an elderly-care home in Belgium by winter/2020, an assessment of the ventilation conditions at said care home was conducted in summer/2021. Four common-rooms were selected as the most-likely involved in the outbreak and assessed via (artificially-injected) CO2-decay test for average air change rates (ACHs) measurement. Two of the rooms were also assessed via passive tracer gas test for long-term ACHs measurement, using decane-D22 as tracer. The average ACHs measured (via both methods) ranged from 1, 8 to 3, 6 h-1 in summertime, being thus probably higher than the ACHs during the outbreak. Nevertheless, none of the ACHs measured comply with the latest recommendations for COVID-19 prevention. Ventilation grilles and decentralized ventilation systems in common areas could enhance the building's ventilation, but thoughtful installation is essential;experience shows that thermal discomfort often leads to closing ventilation grilles even during a pandemic, resulting in significantly diminished fresh-air supply. © 2022 17th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, INDOOR AIR 2022. All rights reserved.
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Senior housing with age-friendly design and elderly care services contributes to the health and well-being of older people. Previous research has evidenced that the immediate environment factors of senior housing, such as the design of housing features and facilities, have a direct bearing on the satisfaction and quality of life of older people. However, external environment factors, such as political, economic, and social ones that affect key stakeholders' behaviors in senior housing development, are relatively under-researched. Accordingly, this study aimed to explore the external environmental factors influencing the development of senior housing. Taking Hong Kong as case study, this study first commenced with a systematic review to identify the factors in political, economic, and social domains from global evidence. Following this, we interviewed local experts from academia, industry, and government to solicit their opinions on the relative importance of these factors. We then determined the factor rankings using the analytical hierarchy process method. The results showed that local experts perceived economic factors as the most critical ones in influencing senior housing development in Hong Kong, including land costs, funding from financial institutions, and government incentives. If policymakers tend to promote senior housing in densely populated cities like Hong Kong, the policies should be attractive for housing developers, such as land premium concessions and innovative financial channels for supporting the long-term development of senior housing. © 2023 by the authors.
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The central guiding ethical principles of professional care are dignity, care, justice, and respect. The current framework conditions and circumstances in the care of the elderly mean that professional care ethics are no longer feasible in many cases. This leads not only to enormous (moral) burdens among the nursing staff, but also to a comprehensive degree to professional dissatisfaction and to leaving the profession. The term "Pflexit" (based on the German word "Pflege"â¯= care) was first raised during the corona pandemic and has not faded. In order to ensure ethically justified and dignified care for the elderly that is also oriented towards human rights, as is conveyed politically in charters and rightly expected by people in need of care, rapid and comprehensive social and political intervention is required.In this context, dignity and respect are also a social mandate. Dignified professional care based on ethical values can only be implemented if nurses are shown this same respect. The clear warnings of a "nursing climate crisis" must finally be followed by action to stop the exodus from the profession. In this discussion paper, the importance of a professional care ethic is first explained. In a second step, the framework and current problems that oppose a comprehensive implementation of core values in nursing care for the elderly are highlighted. The focus here is on the effects of the precarious personnel situation.
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Ética en Enfermería , Humanos , Anciano , Pacientes Internos , Alemania , Principios Morales , Derechos HumanosRESUMEN
Hong Kong's Covid-19 epidemic circumstances have given us a valuable opportunity to reflect on Hong Kong's elderly care policies. This essay argues that Hong Kong should learn from the West and provide a subsidy to family caregivers for proper elderly care. We rebut the social and moralistic reasons for not introducing such a subsidy in Hong Kong. We indicate that providing cash subsidy to family caregivers does not monetize or tarnish Confucian filial obligation to take care of elderly people, but enable adult children from low-income families to undertake this obligation effectively. In addition, we contend that providing such a subsidy would not significantly affect the job market in Hong Kong and that incurred financial and manpower costs for monitoring family care are controllable.
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COVID-19 , Cuidadores , Humanos , Anciano , Hong Kong , Religión , Principios MoralesRESUMEN
Virtual Reality (VR) and simulation continue po-sitioning as suitable tools for fine-tuning processes otherwise impossible in real life. Such is the case of Aether, a mobile service robot for elderly care developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aether's development was negatively impacted due to restrictions placed on accessing long-term care facilities that impeded testing object tracking, elderly tracking, fall detection, and human-robot interactions. Our efforts to maximize Aether's development led us to create a digital twin where the core functionality is replicated to train the machine learning modules to optimize the robot's responses before real-world deployment. However, the digital twin creation requires significant authoring to ensure the virtual environment matches the real one by employing 3D technical artistry skills, which demands a professional knowledgeable in this domain. This paper presents a sandbox prototype for scene customization that allows importing, positioning, scaling, and saving changes for mobile robot simulation. Our preliminary testing of the sandbox has focused on usability to understand how the setting up of the environment is perceived. Preliminary results indicate that the sandbox is usable with improvements pertaining to improving the manipulation of the objects. © 2022 IEEE.
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The usual lives have been changed since the COVID-19 Outbreak took place. Elderly people suffer as much as others and their lives have been impacted a lot. This paper aims to analyze the social network use and the recreation and socialization activity participation before and after the COVID-19 pandemical appearance in long-term care institutions. In the empirical side of this research, the authors of this paper sent an email questionnaire to long-term care institutions located in Rio de Janeiro city, Brazil. In the theoretical side of this research, an investigation was carried out through the scientific databases. Data were analyzed using the programming languages Python, Excel, and IBM SPSS Statistics. As a result, this paper shows an apparent increase in social network use and a drop in recreation and socialization activity participation after the COVID-19 pandemical appearance in long-term care institutions. The presented findings are the first step, which can be part of future studies analyzing the potential growth in social network use among elderly people by comparing elderly residents with non-residents in the long-term care institutions. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of COVID is the property of MDPI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
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The COVID-19 has had a profound impact on human society, the elderly, as a vulnerable group, are the most affected. Based on two cases of disease narrative collected by the department of neurology of a hospital in Guiyang, this paper analyzed the shortcomings of elderly care in the context of epidemic prevention and control. The overall health information literacy of the elderly was low, which made it difficult to obtain correct epidemic related information. The lifestyle of the elderly has changed during the epidemic prevention and control stag. The long time isolation at home has reduced their constitution and made them prone to illness, thus affecting the quality of healthy elderly care. In this stage, the psychological burden of the middle-aged and elderly people has been increasing, which reduced the life satisfaction and subjective well-being of the elderly, and increased the risk of depression. In view of these outstanding problems, this paper proposed corresponding measures, aiming to improve the quality of life and physical and mental health of the elderly during the epidemic prevention and control stage, and provide reference for realizing healthy aging in China. © 2023, Editorial department of Chinese Medical Ethics. All rights reserved.
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In the post-COVID-19 era of green economic recovery, this paper analyses the elderly care environment of cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region and investigates the future development direction of the elderly care industry based on comparative advantages and resource endowment. Firstly, an evaluation index system of the elderly care environment is constructed, then the entropy weight method is used to calculate the weight, and finally the comprehensive evaluation index of the elderly care environment in each city is obtained by weighted calculation. The development directions of the elderly care industry for each city in the YRD region are proposed based on the results. The study shows that the suitable development direction of the elderly care industry differs among cities. Cities suitable for residential elderly care are mainly distributed in the central and western regions, cities fit for the leisure and tourism of elderly care are mainly located in the southeast, and cities suitable for the treatment and rehabilitation of elderly care are mainly provincial capitals and cities with better economic development levels. Additionally, Wenzhou City in Zhejiang Province is eligible for the development of a comprehensive elderly care industry. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
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Background: Caregivers of elderly people need the right education and empowering skills to manage their own health needs and the elderly people they care for. Objective: The study aimed to explore youth perceptions of the My-Elderly-Care-Skills Module intervention and its perceived feasibility. Methods: This study involved youth respondents (18-30 years old) from low-income households who are accountable to providing care for independent older people (60 years or above) living in the same house. A qualitative study using a case study design was used to assess youth perceptions based on the content of the My-Elderly-Care-Skills module, by focusing on its implementation usage and usefulness for the care of the elderly. A total of 30 youths voluntarily participated in the online training workshop during the COVID-19 pandemic movement restriction order period. There were multiple sources of data, such as video recorded on reflection of care given at home, text messages in a WhatsApp group, and in-depth interviews during small group online meetings. Data were recorded and transcribed verbatim for common themes before a theme analysis was conducted. Inductive content analysis was performed after the saturation point was met. Results: Thematic analysis derived two domains of feasibility: operational and technical feasibility. There were three themes under operational practicality (improving awareness, addressing the caregiving skills needs, and seeking resources for knowledge) and three themes for technical practicality (easily used and informative, skill in effective communication, and program fulfillment). Conclusion: It was verified that it is feasible for young caregivers of the elderly to participate in the My-Elderly-Care-Skills training intervention as it helps in improving knowledge and skills performance in managing and caring for the elderly.
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COVID-19 , Pandemias , Humanos , Adolescente , Anciano , Adulto Joven , Adulto , Cuidadores , Investigación CualitativaRESUMEN
Surveillance systems collating individual-level data may limit timely information sharing during rapidly evolving, infectious disease outbreaks. We present a digital outbreak alert and notification system (MUIZ) in which institutional-level data are reported, allowing real-time outbreak monitoring in elderly care facilities (ECF). We describe trends in the number of outbreaks, mean case number per outbreak, and case-fatality rate (deaths/recovered + deaths) of SARS-CoV-2 in ECF notified through MUIZ in the Rotterdam area (April 2020-March 2022). Overall, 369 outbreaks were reported from 128 ECF that registered with MUIZ (approximately 85% of all ECF), and 114 (89%) notified at least one SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Trends were consistent with the concurrent national epidemiology and societal control measures in place. MUIZ is a simple outbreak surveillance tool that was highly adopted and acceptable to users. Dutch PHS regions are increasingly adopting the system and it has potential for adaptation and further development in similar institutional outbreak settings.
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The COVID-19 has had a profound impact on human society, the elderly, as a vulnerable group, are the most affected. Based on two cases of disease narrative collected by the department of neurology of a hospital in Guiyang, this paper analyzed the shortcomings of elderly care in the context of epidemic prevention and control. The overall health information literacy of the elderly was low, which made it difficult to obtain correct epidemic related information. The lifestyle of the elderly has changed during the epidemic prevention and control stag. The long time isolation at home has reduced their constitution and made them prone to illness, thus affecting the quality of healthy elderly care. In this stage, the psychological burden of the middle-aged and elderly people has been increasing, which reduced the life satisfaction and subjective well-being of the elderly, and increased the risk of depression. In view of these outstanding problems, this paper proposed corresponding measures, aiming to improve the quality of life and physical and mental health of the elderly during the epidemic prevention and control stage, and provide reference for realizing healthy aging in China. © 2023, Editorial department of Chinese Medical Ethics. All rights reserved.
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The COVID-19 has had a profound impact on human society, the elderly, as a vulnerable group, are the most affected. Based on two cases of disease narrative collected by the department of neurology of a hospital in Guiyang, this paper analyzed the shortcomings of elderly care in the context of epidemic prevention and control. The overall health information literacy of the elderly was low, which made it difficult to obtain correct epidemic related information. The lifestyle of the elderly has changed during the epidemic prevention and control stag. The long time isolation at home has reduced their constitution and made them prone to illness, thus affecting the quality of healthy elderly care. In this stage, the psychological burden of the middle-aged and elderly people has been increasing, which reduced the life satisfaction and subjective well-being of the elderly, and increased the risk of depression. In view of these outstanding problems, this paper proposed corresponding measures, aiming to improve the quality of life and physical and mental health of the elderly during the epidemic prevention and control stage, and provide reference for realizing healthy aging in China. © 2023, Editorial department of Chinese Medical Ethics. All rights reserved.
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Based on the investigation of the current situation of smart elderly care services in Wuhan, Hubei Province, combined with the results of field visits, this paper combs and analyzes the common problems faced by smart elderly care and the new problems and opportunities brought by the epidemic. Put forward countermeasures and suggestions to solve the problems faced by smart elderly care, so as to enhance the suitability and availability of smart elderly care services, and finally achieve the purpose of improving the well-being of the elderly and sharing the fruits of social development with the elderly. © 2022 ACM.
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Advances in medicine and technology have resulted in an increase in human life expectancy and aging population across the globe. The growing geriatric population and its medical needs, has a significant impact on the healthcare ecosystem, including higher medical and human costs to manage the upsurge of chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's Dementia, Parkinson's, Diabetes Mellitus, frailty, stroke, cardiovascular disease and with the recent COVID-19 pandemic. IoT wearables and devices offer a promising solution to reliably assess, monitor, and support healthy ageing in a remote manner. Objective and holistic patient information made available by IoT technology is very valuable for physicians to manage the chronic ailments and slow down the disease progression in their geriatric patient base. In this study we present a broad overview of ailments pertinent to elders and review of the case studies with IoT applications and its interconnected sensing solutions to manage those ailments. © 2022 American Institute of Physics Inc.. All rights reserved.
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Einleitung The pandemic poses a variety of health-related challenges for workers in different occupations. Employees in essential jobs experienced higher demands and workloads while many office workers transitioned into home office and had to cope with several new demands (e.g. developing new daily routines, managing childcare, mastering digital technologies). In addition, shifts into short-time work or unemployment elevated job insecurity and financial strains in the working population. Thus, the pandemic exposes workers to a number of stressors possibly influencing their health. Our research takes a closer look at occupational differences in health-related changes. With the goal to analyse intra-individual changes in mental health by occupation, the current analysis investigates differences between occupational groups in self-reported changes in general health during the first COVID-19 pandemic wave in Germany. Methoden We use prospective cohort data of the German National Cohort (NAKO), which combines pre-pandemic baseline measures of health indicators of more than 100,000 workers with data collected during the first wave of the pandemic (February to August 2020). The classification of workers into different occupational groups is based on the German Classification of Occupations 2010 (Klassifikation der Berufe, KldB 2010). We distinguish between horizontal (occupational sectors and segments) and vertical occupational differences (skill level and personnel responsibility). Health is measured by self-rated health ('Compared to the time before the Corona pandemic, how would you describe your current state of health?') and mental health (depressive symptoms, anxiety disorder symptoms). Multivariable analysis linking deterioration in general health (yes/no) to occupational characteristics were carried out. Ergebnisse On average, 10.1 % of employees reported a deterioration in self-rated health during the first pandemic wave. The decline was the most pronounced in elderly care (adj. prevalence of 12.3%), education and social work (11.8%), administration (11.7%), and in pharmacy (11.3%). Employees in office jobs (11.1%), and in the segments of hospitality and cultural services (10.8%) also experienced a larger deterioration in general health than the average. Schlussfolgerung Our study fills an important gap in research by focusing on health-related changes due to pandemic in different occupational groups. Our analysis can highlight important adversities by occupation which might not be directly related to infection risk. Addressing them and improving working conditions in those occupations could be an important policy task. Our further research plan includes the analyses of intra-individual changes in mental health by occupation. We plan to have a specific focus on how pandemic-related work changes (such as home office, job insecurity or increased workload) contributed to changes in mental health.
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Nowadays, chatbots have become popular tools in such a way that they are used in different sectors like commercial, elderly care, tourism, and education. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many students and teachers to suspend face-to-face classes. Therefore, schools and governments have found it necessary to continue education remotely, using the resources provided by the Internet. This fact has created a greater interest in educational chatbots, so several projects have been proposed to develop these academic tools, each following its way of implementation and addressing issues from different points of view. This paper presents a proposal for chatbot classification, following the Systematic Mapping Study and an iterative method to review and classify educational chatbots. We also discuss the resulting categories and their characteristics and limitations and possible uses by developers and researchers. © 2022 - IOS Press. All rights reserved.
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Sensor networks are deployed in people's homes to make life easier and more comfortable and secure. They might represent an interesting approach for elderly care as well. This work highlights the benefits of a sensor network implemented in the homes of a group of users between 55 and 75 years old, which encompasses a simple home energy optimization algorithm based on user behavior. We analyze variables related to vital signs to establish users' comfort and tranquility thresholds. We statistically study the perception of security that users exhibit, differentiating between men and women, examining how it affects the person's development at home, as well as the reactivity of the sensor algorithm, to optimize its performance. The proposed algorithm is analyzed under certain performance metrics, showing an improvement of 15% over a sensor network under the same conditions. We look at and quantify the usefulness of accurate alerts on each sensor and how it reflects in the users' perceptions (for men and women separately). This study analyzes a simple, low-cost, and easy-to-implement home-based sensor network optimized with an adaptive energy optimization algorithm to improve the lives of older adults, which is capable of sending alerts of possible accidents or intruders with the highest efficiency.
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Algoritmos , Percepción , Anciano , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana EdadRESUMEN
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) swept across the world and posed a serious threat to human health. Health and elderly care enterprises are committed to continuously improving people's health. With the rapid development of the digital economy, many enterprises have established digital product-service ecosystems after combining "Internet +," big data, cloud computing, and the big health industry. This paper uses the case study method to analyze the overseas market value mining mode of health and elderly care enterprises through in-depth research on leading health and elderly care enterprises. This study explores the value mining mode of the leading enterprise's global big health market using a cluster analysis and Bayesian model with the support of data on geographical characteristics, users' sleep habits, and national big health. This paper theoretically summarizes the successful cases of health and elderly care enterprises through digital transformation, which provides a useful reference for the intelligent transformation of the health and elderly care industry.
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COVID-19 , Ecosistema , Anciano , Teorema de Bayes , COVID-19/epidemiología , Humanos , IndustriasRESUMEN
Background: Quality improvement project undertaken by the Ageing and Complex Medicine team to improve the quality and quantity of communication with patients' relatives. Introduction: Visitation restrictions at RAEI since the onset of the COVID pandemic have created barriers to effective communication between patients' relatives and the medical team. Patients' relatives were frequently receiving poorly structured information, incorrect information, or even no information. This problem was hospital wide and likely to have affected other trusts. It particularly affected elderly care wards, where the cohort of patients were often less able provide their relatives with updates themselves. We therefore agreed a service standard whereby the medical team would provide a medical update via phone to the patients' next of kin within 24 hours of admission followed by twice weekly updates by any member of the wider MDT. Our aim was to improve the quality and quantity of communication with the patients' relatives. Method: So far 6 data capture cycles have seen us implement change in various ways such as utilisation of a white board to highlight when updates are due, a staff feedback survey to highlight barriers to providing the service and a relative feedback survey to evaluate their experience. Results: Compared to baseline data we have seen an improvement in the quantity of relative updates with most cycles. Conclusion: We have improved the quantity of relative updates and embedded it as established culture on Astley ward. Barriers to success include staffing levels, time burden, and low confidence levels amongst junior doctors. Cycle 7 will see implementation of a teaching session for new junior doctor cohorts to improve their confidence. I would like to share our learning and success with the wider hospital and see implementation of the service standard across all wards within the trust.
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Population aging has increased the demand for elderly care worldwide. The home-based elderly care system plays an important role in meeting this demand in developing countries. The quality of home-based elderly care is associated with the job satisfaction of caregivers in home-based elderly care programs, which has rarely been studied. This paper explores the factors that affect the job satisfaction of these elderly caregivers, including personal characteristics, working conditions, employment status, training, caregiver-client relationships, welfare, work experience, and burnout. It utilizes data from the Shanghai Domestic-work Professionalization Survey (SDPS), which was conducted among four types of in-home caregivers (n = 1000) in Shanghai over the period from May to September 2021. This paper selected a sample of elderly caregivers (n = 285) to examine their job satisfaction. The results show that gender, age, marital status, how they earned the job, relation with clients, social insurance, and work experience are significantly associated with the job satisfaction of in-home elderly caregivers, and their job satisfaction is negatively associated with their burnout levels. However, training and working conditions have no significant effect on the job satisfaction of in-home elderly caregivers, which is different from previous studies on formal care workers, such as nurses, in the institutional care system.