ScholarWorks@성균관대학교

초록

Objective: The purposes of this study are (1) to develop an evaluation method for quantifying the care burden of excretion care and (2) to apply this method to demonstrate the effectiveness of excretion care robot in reducing the care burden. Background: The global trend of aging is emerging as a significant social issue, with a shortage of caregivers and an increasing care burden. As the demand for caregiving service increases, the work intensity of caregivers are also rising, which is strongly associated with the increasing prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) in caregivers. In response, care robots have gained worldwide attention as a potential solution. However, evidence demonstrating that care robots effectively reduce the caregivers' burden is still insufficient, and there is a lack of systematic evaluation frameworks to quantify the care burden. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to develop an evaluation framework for assessing care tasks, with a focus on excretion care, which is known to have high work intensity and frequency. Method: To develop the evaluation method, key indices for measuring physical and mental burden of excretion care were selected based on expert opinions in the fields of ergonomics and occupational therapy. Then, the relative weights of each index were derived using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). A care burden score (CBS) was calculated by linearly combining the relative weights and scores of each index providing comprehensive information on both physical and mental load. To apply this evaluation method, experimental data were collected from 10 caregivers. Manual care (MC) using paper diaper and robot-aided care (RC) were performed on the manikin that mimics human anatomy and physiology, allowing participants to conduct a realistic experiment. MC and RC tasks were divided into separate sub-tasks and then classified into three phases (Preparation phase, Front phase, and Post phase) based on their sequence and characteristics. During these tasks, muscle activity of 8 muscles (Upper trapezius, Biceps brachii, Triceps brachii, Erector spinae, Rectus femoris, Biceps femoris, Tibialis anterior), motion analysis, and questionnaire data were collected. Using this experimental data, the CBS for both MC and RC were derived, and statistical analysis was conducted to examine the significant differences in CBS based on robot use. Results: Results indicated that the use of the excretion robot significantly increased physical burden during the preparation phase, whereas during the front phase, the use of the robot significantly reduced physical burden. In terms of mental burden, a decrease was observed only in the front phase when using the robot. Results of the care burden score (% CBS), which combines both mental and physical burdens, indicated that the use of the robot led to a reduction in overall burden in the front phase. Conclusion: This study developed a systematic evaluation method for excretion care burden and discussed the applicability using experimental data from robot-assisted and traditional manual care. The reduction effect of the robot on care burden was lower than anticipated; however, a reduction of approximately 4.6% in CBS was observed in the Front phase compared to manual care. Application: This study presents a standardized evaluation method for excretion care burden, which is expected to be expanded to various caregiving tasks such as feeding, bathing, and transferring, and could be used to identify high-risk tasks in nursing field. By directly comparing the CBS between robot-aided care and manual care, the effect of the care robot in reducing care burden was demonstrated, which is expected to have a positive impact on the widespread adoption of care robots.

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