在宅要介護高齢者にとっての日常生活における車いす利用の意味

抄録

In order to reveal what it means for the frail elderly living at home to use a wheelchair in daily life and to obtain suggestions regarding improving their mobility, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 elderly people.
As a result, following 8 categories of meanings were obtained : “secure, safe, and easy mobilization,” “enjoy outings without having to walk,” “leading a life with less pain of injury or illness,” “the wheelchair being second nature to the person,” “restrictions due to physical barriers,” “minimizing the anxiety of their families,” “movement dependant on others” and “concerns about other's perceptions.” These were classified into 2 dimensions : meanings based on “the user's activities” and meanings based on “the psychological relationships with others.” The meanings in each of these dimensions were then classified as “positive meanings” and “negative meanings,” respectively.
The result shows that using a wheelchair not only affects the way and the range of the user's activities but also has an effect on their psychological relationships with others, and it is important to give sufficient consideration to the latter effect as well as the former effect in supporting for the elderly with wheelchairs.