Effect of care gesture on transfer care behavior in elderly nursing home in Japan

Abstract

In this paper, care gesture effect on elder transfer care behavior between bed and wheelchair was investigated. A ‘hypothesis’ elder (a 80 kg cooperative female with 15 years of care occupation experience, assumed that the lower half body is paralyzed) was employed in both expert and non-expert caregiver’s handling tasks. Both expert and non-expert’s care gestures during transfer care process (hold up, turning, lower down) were recorded by three-dimensional motion capture system. In order to extract expert and non-expert care gesture’s feature difference, motion analysis of caregiver’s body exertions was also summarized by body gravity movement track, knee’s flexion/extension, low-back bending situation. As a result, it could be concluded that expert master optimal care gesture to accomplish the transfer care work with reduced body loading and limited energy by taking full advantage of lower half body exertion.