Abstract
In the country which is entering aging society, an increasing number of the elderly living in nursing homes. The elderly who live there suffer from different kinds of chronic diseases including degenerative arthritis, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. Assisting the elderly dressing is one of the most difficult tasks of nurse aids’ works. During dressing process, regardless of nurse aids or the elderly have spent a lot of time, resulting in a cumulative nurse aid musculoskeletal injuries. Nurse aids assist the elderly to dress under high pressure environment for a long time, they always get work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs), non-traumatic soft tissue musculoskeletal disorders, back and shoulder injury owing to inappropriate application of force. Good clothing must design in accordance with the elderly’s shape, make fabric softer, and let the elderly have less movement in joints.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to design a new elderly clothing to reduce the cumulative damage of nurse aids from assisting the elderly dressing effectively. Many aspects need to be considered to uphold the core-concept of elderly and nursing aide- oriented clothing designs to enhance nurse aids’ efficiency and reduce the chance of occupational injury for nurse aids. In this study, we did the related literature review,
observed interaction between nurse aids and the elderly during dressing process and learned about the psychological state through interviews. We observed the nursing home under Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital Tainan Branch, Taiwan. We designed two new elderly clothes that can raise nurse aid’s efficiency and reduce injury with two different methods independently, one is Morphological Analysis(design A) and the other is Co-design(design B). Design A uses Velcro to join fabric to reduce the time nurse aids spend on finding cords.
Design B is a one-piece cloth which wear from front in order to reduce unnecessary rotate of joint. We conduct a study for testing the dressing time to assess the new elderly clothes with the original clothing. The results showed that either in put on or take off stage, original clothing spent more time than design A and B, furthermore, design B spend less time than design A. By interview nurse aids, we knew design A is much better than the clothing
nursing home used(original clothing) because of time-saving. But the shortage of Velcro is it will take time to separate them when they stick together. About design B, one-piece really save a lot of time than two-pieces. But it should care more about elderly’s perception, sense of security and exposure, especially for the heavy elderly. The way for wearing design B is much better than others because it replaces extension of humerus with flexion, the elderly only need to raise their hands in the front. In the future, we should care more about psychology when we do elderly clothing design related research.
Keywords: occupant injury, elderly clothing, nursing home, ergonomics design, dressing
