Adherence and potential factors of adherence to a resistance, coordination and endurance training in older retirement home residents over 6 months.

INTRODUCTION: High exercise adherence is a key factor for effective exercise programmes. However, little is known about predictors of exercise adherence to a multimodal machine-based training in older retirement home residents. AIMS: To assess exercise adherence and potential predictors of adherence. Furthermore, to evaluate user acceptance of the multimodal training and the change in exercise self-efficacy. METHODS: In this sub-analysis of the bestform-F study, a total of 77 retirement home residents ≥65 years (mean age: 85.6 ± 6.6 years, 77.9% female) participated in a 6-month machine-based resistance, coordination and endurance training. Attendance to the training was documented for each training session. To identify potential predictors a multiple linear regression model was fitted to the data. Analyzed predictors included age, sex, body mass index (BMI), physical function, exercise self-efficacy, and physical activity history. Different domains of user acceptance (e.g. safety aspects, infrastructure) and exercise self-efficacy were assessed by a questionnaire and the exercise self-efficacy scale (ESES), respectively. RESULTS: Mean exercise adherence was 67.2% (median: 74.4%). The regression model (R2 = 0.225, p = 0.033) revealed that the 6-minute walk test (6-MWT) at baseline significantly predicted exercise adherence (ß: 0.074, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.006-0.142, p = 0.033). Different user domains were rated at least as good by 83.9%-96.9% of participants, reflecting high acceptance. No statistically significant change was found for exercise self-efficacy over 6 months (mean change: 0.47 ± 3.08 points, p = 0.156). CONCLUSION: Retirement home residents attended more than two thirds of offered training sessions and physical function at baseline was the key factor for predicting adherence. User acceptance of the training devices was highly rated. These findings indicate good potential for implementation of the exercise programme.

Factors influencing senior care and living preferences among older adults in Jiangsu, China: a cross-sectional survey study.

BACKGROUND: As the population ages, senior care for older adults in China has become increasingly important and has attracted the attention of both government and society. This study aimed to explore preferences and influencing factors related to senior care among older Chinese adults and thus propose effective and targeted strategies for the development of a comprehensive care system for older adults in the aging Chinese population. METHODS: Data were obtained from a cross-sectional survey conducted in sixteen communities or villages in Jiangsu Province, China, from July to September 2021. Guided by the Andersen Behavioral Model, multivariate logistic regression was conducted to identify factors associated with preferences for senior care arrangements. RESULTS: A total of 870 respondents were included in the study, 60.11% of whom preferred receiving care in their own homes, while only 13.68% chose residential care facilities (RCFs). For predisposing factors, rural respondents preferred receiving care in their own homes compared to urban respondents (children's home: OR = 0.55, P < 0.01; RCF: OR = 0.58, P < 0.01). Concerning enabling factors, respondents who were not employed (OR = 2.30, P < 0.01) and those without financial support (OR = 2.73, P < 0.05) preferred RCFs to their own homes. Respondents receiving life assistance (sometimes: OR = 2.76, P < 0.001; regularly: OR = 2.57, P < 0.01; every day: OR = 3.57, P < 0.001) preferred their children's homes to their own homes. In terms of need factors, respondents with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs, OR > 1, P < 0.05), those who knew about RCFs (some: OR = 0.53, P < 0.005; no: OR = 0.10, P < 0.001) and those with a good impression of RCFs (fair: OR = 3.72, P < 0.05; good: OR = 11.91, P < 0.001) preferred receiving care in RCFs compared to their counterparts. CONCLUSIONS: Older Chinese adults' senior care preferences were affected by predisposing factors, enabling factors, and need factors. Policy-makers should consider targeted measures to identify more precise senior care services and thus address aging challenges in China.

An evolutionary game-based simulation study of a multi-agent governance system for smart senior care services in China.

BACKGROUND: The competing interests of the government, smart senior care technology service providers, and older adults have led to a serious fragmentation of governance in China. This study aims to identify the collaboration mechanisms and evolutionary stabilization strategies for these agents. METHODS: An evolutionary game model is developed to analyze the strategic decisions made by the government, smart senior care technology service providers, and older adults. A sensitivity analysis is conducted using data from Anhui Province, China, to verify the effects of relevant parameters on the strategy decisions of each agent. RESULTS: The results of the simulation and sensitivity analysis indicated that, first, despite changes in the initial willingness values of the tripartite agents, the system eventually converges on 1. Second, the collaboration mechanism of the tripartite agents in the smart senior care system is related to government incentives, penalties, and subsidies, smart senior care service costs, and the additional benefits provided to smart senior care technology service providers. CONCLUSION: The strategy decisions of the government, providers, and older adults interact with each other. To promote collaboration among the tripartite agents and improve governance effectiveness, the government should strengthen the regulations for providers, increase penalties for providers that engage in a breach of trust, provide moderate incentives and subsidies, and control smart senior care service costs.

Smart senior care cognition and health among Chinese elderly: A moderated mediation model featuring parent-child relationship and internet use.

In the context of digital transformation, smart senior care (SSC) cognition among elderly individuals has become an important contributor to their health. Using a sample of 345 older adults derived from the cross-sectional data of a questionnaire survey on the application of home-based SSC services and products among elderly individuals, this study explored how the parent‒child relationship mediated the linkage between SSC cognition and elderly health. To examine the moderating role of internet use, we applied the multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to test whether significant disparities exist between older adults who use the internet and those who do not on the pathways in the mediation model. After controlling for gender, age, hukou (household registration permit), ethnicity, income, marital status, and education level, we found that SSC cognition exerted significant positive effects on elderly health, in which the parent‒child relationship exerted a mediating effect. As for differences between the elderly with internet use and those without, on the three pathways connecting SSC cognition and health, SSC cognition and parent‒child relationship, and parent‒child relationship and health among elderly individuals, older adults who used the internet were more susceptible than those who did not. The findings are helpful for improving the policy-making on elderly health and may serve as a practical guide and theoretical reference for the promotion of active aging.

The willingness and influencing factors to choose smart senior care among old adults in China.

BACKGROUND: Population aging has become an escalating issue in China resulting in increasing healthcare demand. Smart senior care has the potential to help older adults live independently and relieve the pressure of healthcare including home-based care. This study aimed to explore Chinese older adults' preferred access models and service content of smart senior care and factors affecting their willingness to choose smart senior care. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study. A total of 760 community-dwelling older adults from Xuzhou, China were included in this study. Their demographics, family support, health status, smart senior care use, and willingness to choose smart senior care were collected. The Chi-square test was used for single factor analysis of each variable. The statistically significant variables were included in the logistics regression model to analyze factors influencing older adults' willingness to choose smart senior care. The chi-square goodness of fit test was used to analyze the preferred content and access models of smart senior care; the Bonferroni method was used to correct the results. RESULTS: The finding indicated that participants' age, number of children, frequency of children visiting parents, adequate senior care, self-reported health, chronic diseases, smartphone use, and attitude toward smart senior care were significantly associated with their willingness to choose the smart senior care (p < 0.05). For smart senior care access models, participants preferred the remote monitoring model, telephone call model, and the community site model over the health smart home model and the smart application platform model. There was no statistical difference among these three preferred access models (p' > 0.005). Regarding service content, participants desired medical care service the most (p' < 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: Chinese older adults' willingness to choose smart senior care is affected by personal, family, health, and other factors. To develop China's senior care, we should consider their demand and preference for smart senior care. It is important to enrich the content of smart senior care, especially on medical care services, and maintain the dynamic balance between supply and demand using a diverse supply approach.

Creating Supportive Environments for LGBT Older Adults: An Efficacy Evaluation of Staff Training in a Senior Living Facility.

Supportive housing later in life tends to be a key concern for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) elders. Most senior care providers are un(der)prepared to meet the needs of older LGBT adults. This study evaluated the efficacy of a 4 hours, face-to-face, research-based, LGBT-diversity training designed to improve senior housing facility staff's cultural competency regarding the needs of LGBT elders. Findings from this study found a significant increase in LGBT content knowledge between pre- and post-intervention assessments and a significant decrease in perceived preparedness when working with LGBT elders. These effects remained significant after controlling for staff designation, religion, educational attainment, and training session. Findings suggest that staff's cultural competence affected their perceived readiness to address LGBT elders' needs. Implications are related to the concept of cultural humility or the lifelong process of understanding others' experiences based on the recognition of lack of un(der)preparedness to create a culturally supportive residential environment.

Analysis of demand and influencing factors for smart senior care among older adults in underdeveloped regions of western China: a case study of Lanzhou.

Introduction: With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and Internet-of-Things technology, internal support systems among families are gradually weakening, which can no longer satisfy the current demands of older adults. In this context, smart senior care has become a new development direction. However, existing studies on the demand for smart senior care are primarily concentrated in economically developed provinces and mega-cities in eastern China; their research results or conclusions may not apply to underdeveloped areas in the Western region. Therefore, our study selects Lanzhou as a representative city in an underdeveloped western region to investigate the demand of older adults for smart senior care and analyze the influencing factors. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 4,815 older adults from Lanzhou, China. A structured questionnaire was designed to investigate the demands of the older adults for smart senior care and analyze thie influencing factors. The Chi-square test was used for single factor analysis of each variable. The logistic regression model included the statistically significant variables to analyze factors influencing older adults' demand for smart senior care. A significance level of p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Among the surveyed older adults, 1,625 (33.75%) expressed a demand for smart senior care. The finding indicated that participants' age, level of education, marital status, monthly income, number of children, type of endowment insurance, and knowledge of smart senior care were significantly associated with their demands for smart senior care (p < 0.05). Notably, medical care emerged as the smart senior care service with the highest demand rate (79.45%). Conclusion: In Lanzhou, older adults show a low level of knowledge but a high demand for smart senior care. Their demand is influenced by personal, family, health conditions, senior care security, and other factors. To advance smart senior care, government departments should accelerate the improvement of the laws and regulations on smart senior care while vigorously enhancing the service's publicity to raise knowledge about it. Additionally, the service contents for smart senior care should be expanded to meet the diversified demands of older adults.

[Hybrid use of the building as a method supporting epidemic safety]. / Hybrydowe wykorzystanie budynku jako metoda wspierajaca bezpieczenstwo epidemiczne.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in changing organisational and technical requirements in the operation of treatment facilities. This paper summarises the available knowledge on the principles of hybrid design of the architecture of treatment units to ensure that different levels of sanitary and hygienic safeguards can be implemented. The basis of this narrative overview is an analysis of the existing Polish legislation on required personnel protection measures and the European Commission's recommendations for the long-term optimisation of building operating costs. In addition, due to the multifaceted and complex nature of the issue, the review was extended to include an example of practice in the technical adaptation of medical buildings for hybrid use in the event of a pandemic of an aetiological agent of risk category III, as a confirmation of the postulate regarding the need to modify the guidelines for the architectural design of the space of medical units, particularly those involved in the care of the elderly. Med Pr Work Health Saf. 2024;75(3):269-278.

Age-appropriate design of smart senior care product APP interface based on deep learning.

With the aging of the population, the quality of life and happiness of the elderly are increasingly becoming concerns of society. Smart senior care (SSC) products are an important tool to improve the quality of life of the elderly, and their application has been widely discussed. However, due to differences in cognitive characteristics and habits of the elderly, they may face difficulties when using smart products. Therefore, how to design a suitable SSC product APP interface for the elderly has become an urgent problem to be solved. The rapid development of deep learning (DL) provides a new way to deal with this problem. This paper aims to optimize the APP interface design of SSC products suitable for the elderly by using DL technology. Specifically, this paper designs a model based on a deep-Q-network (DQN) algorithm, which can better adapt to the usage habits and needs of the elderly through training and optimization. At the same time, the proposed model is evaluated comprehensively to verify its performance and superiority. To achieve the above goals, this paper first summarizes the existing SSC technology and the design suitable for the elderly. On this basis, a model based on the DQN algorithm is designed, and four datasets are used for training and testing. In the design of the model, this paper pays special attention to how to make the interface more friendly and easy to operate to meet the specific demands and preferences of the elderly. After a comprehensive evaluation, it is found that the proposed DQN algorithm model has achieved remarkable improvement in performance. This model has an average return of about 8.8 and 3.9 compared to other models, which have an average return of about 0.9 and 0.2, respectively. This shows that the model designed in this paper performs well in terms of accuracy and average return and performs better than other algorithms. The results of this paper reveal that optimizing the age-appropriate design of the SSC product APP interface through DL technology can notably enhance the user experience and satisfaction of the elderly. This not only helps the elderly to make better use of smart products and improve their quality of life but also provides useful inspiration and guidance for research and practice in related fields.

Digital Phenotyping of Geriatric Depression Using a Community-Based Digital Mental Health Monitoring Platform for Socially Vulnerable Older Adults and Their Community Caregivers: 6-Week Living Lab Single-Arm Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND: Despite the increasing need for digital services to support geriatric mental health, the development and implementation of digital mental health care systems for older adults have been hindered by a lack of studies involving socially vulnerable older adult users and their caregivers in natural living environments. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to determine whether digital sensing data on heart rate variability, sleep quality, and physical activity can predict same-day or next-day depressive symptoms among socially vulnerable older adults in their everyday living environments. In addition, this study tested the feasibility of a digital mental health monitoring platform designed to inform older adult users and their community caregivers about day-to-day changes in the health status of older adults. METHODS: A single-arm, nonrandomized living lab pilot study was conducted with socially vulnerable older adults (n=25), their community caregivers (n=16), and a managerial social worker over a 6-week period during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Depressive symptoms were assessed daily using the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire via scripted verbal conversations with a mobile chatbot. Digital biomarkers for depression, including heart rate variability, sleep, and physical activity, were measured using a wearable sensor (Fitbit Sense) that was worn continuously, except during charging times. Daily individualized feedback, using traffic signal signs, on the health status of older adult users regarding stress, sleep, physical activity, and health emergency status was displayed on a mobile app for the users and on a web application for their community caregivers. Multilevel modeling was used to examine whether the digital biomarkers predicted same-day or next-day depressive symptoms. Study staff conducted pre- and postsurveys in person at the homes of older adult users to monitor changes in depressive symptoms, sleep quality, and system usability. RESULTS: Among the 31 older adult participants, 25 provided data for the living lab and 24 provided data for the pre-post test analysis. The multilevel modeling results showed that increases in daily sleep fragmentation (P=.003) and sleep efficiency (P=.001) compared with one's average were associated with an increased risk of daily depressive symptoms in older adults. The pre-post test results indicated improvements in depressive symptoms (P=.048) and sleep quality (P=.02), but not in the system usability (P=.18). CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that wearable sensors assessing sleep quality may be utilized to predict daily fluctuations in depressive symptoms among socially vulnerable older adults. The results also imply that receiving individualized health feedback and sharing it with community caregivers may help improve the mental health of older adults. However, additional in-person training may be necessary to enhance usability. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06270121; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06270121.

Decision to employ retired nurses to work in senior care businesses: A qualitative study.

AIMS: This paper aimed to explore the views of employers at senior care businesses concerning the employment of retired nurses in Thailand. DESIGN: A qualitative interview study was conducted. METHODS: Face-to-face and online semi-structured interviews with 78 senior care business employers were conducted. RESULTS: Business employers had positive sentiments towards employing retired nurses to deliver care and supported them to remain in the profession. Business employers acknowledged that retired nurses have a high level of professional confidence with excellent knowledge and skills. Furthermore, retired nurses were often assigned to work in managerial roles. In addition, flexibility in terms of work hours, suitability of role and responsibilities, and reasonable compensation rates were important to nurses' decisions to remain in or return to the nursing profession. There is a need for the further development of recruitment, retention and reform policies to encourage retired nurses to continue or return to the nursing profession. PATIENT AND PUBLIC CONTRIBUTIONS: We thank all participants for their valuable input throughout the study.

Awareness, use, and need of smart care for older adults: A comparative study based on a survey in Macao, China.

Introduction: With population aging, taking care of the older adults has become a challenge for many countries and regions, and smart care for older adults is considered as a solution to this problem. Need is an important factor that determines whether the model of smart care for older adults can be efficiently promoted and ultimately help in effective senior care. Methods: Based on a survey among older adults and their caregivers in Macao, this paper conducted comparative and correlation studies on the awareness, use, and need of smart care goods and services for older adults. Results: Differences appeared among the groups based on the different categories and items of goods and services. The respondents' awareness, use, and need of smart senior care were generally low, and levels were lower among older adults than among caregivers; older adults were more concerned about spiritual needs, while the caregivers were more concerned about the health and safety of older adults. Correlation studies showed that awareness of smart senior care was positively related to its use, and these two variables were positively correlated to the need for smart senior care. Implications: This paper fills in the research gap on the need for smart senior care and can help to promote matching supply and demand to enhance the development of the smart senior care industry.

Perspectives on the popularization of smart senior care to meet the demands of older adults living alone in communities of Southwest China: A qualitative study.

Background: Older adults who live alone face challenges in daily life and in maintaining their health status quo. Currently, however, their growing demands cannot be satisfied with high quality; therefore, these demands expressed by elders may be settled in the form of smart senior care. Hence, the improvement in smart senior care may produce more positive meanings in promoting the health and sense of happiness among this elderly population. This study aimed to explore the perceptions of demands and satisfaction with regard to the provision of senior care services to the community-dwelling older adults who live alone in Southwest China, thus providing a reference for the popularization of smart senior care. Methods: This study adopted a qualitative descriptive approach on demands and the popularization of smart senior care. Semi-structured and in-depth individual interviews were conducted with 15 community-dwelling older adults who lived alone in Southwest China between March and May 2021. Thematic analysis was applied to analyze the data. Results: Through data analysis, three major themes and subcategories were generated: "necessities" (contradiction: more meticulous daily life care and higher psychological needs vs. the current lower satisfaction status quo; conflict: higher demands for medical and emergency care against less access at present), "feasibility" (objectively feasible: the popularization of smart devices and applications; subjectively feasible: interests in obtaining health information), and "existing obstacles" (insufficient publicity; technophobia; patterned living habits; and concerns). Conclusions: Smart senior care may resolve the contradiction that prevails between the shortage of medical resources and the increasing demands for eldercare. Despite several obstacles that stand in the way of the popularization of smart senior care, the necessities and feasibility lay the preliminary foundation for its development and popularization. Decision-makers, communities, developers, and providers should cooperate to make smart senior care more popular and available to seniors living alone, facilitating independence while realizing aging in place by promoting healthy aging.

Paid caregivers' experiences of falls prevention and care in China's senior care facilities: A phenomenological study.

Background: In China, as population aging accelerates, senior care facilities have gradually become a mainstream option. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the annual rate of falls has increased from 30 to 50% in senior care facilities. A study found that older adults who live in senior care facilities are three times more likely to fall than those who live in the community. The quality of care is highly related to the occurrence of falls. Therefore, exploring paid caregivers' experiences is very important to prevent falls in senior care facilities. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore paid caregivers' experiences of fall prevention and care in China's senior care facilities. Furthermore, we discussed the situation and provided suggestions. Design: This is a phenomenological study using face-to-face, in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Setting: The study was conducted at four senior care facilities in Changsha, Hunan, China. Participants: Fourteen paid caregivers in four senior care facilities, including nursing assistants and senior nurses, participated in this study. Methods: A purposive sample method was used to select 14 nursing assistants and senior nurses from four different senior care facilities in Changsha from March to April 2022. Every participant individually completed a face-to-face, in-depth, semi-structured interview. Based on the phenomenological research methodology, the thematic analysis method and the Colaizzi analysis method were used for data analysis and theme extraction. Results: Based on interview data, a total of seven themes were distilled: (1) paid caregivers' professional requirements; (2) paid caregivers' attitude toward falls; (3) paid caregivers' fall training and education; (4) paid caregivers' knowledge about falls; (5) paid caregivers' fall risk assessment; (6) paid caregivers' fall prevention; and (7) paid caregivers' fall treatment. Conclusion: In China's senior care facilities, paid caregivers to need to be responsible and pay appropriate attention to older adults. First, senior nurses and nursing assistants need to enhance communication and cooperation. Second, they must learn about deficiencies in fall risk assessment and try their best to improve their capability. Third, they must adopt appropriate education methods to improve fall prevention capability. Finally, the protection of privacy should be taken seriously.

Impact of the Soundscape on the Physical Health and the Perception of Senior Adults in Senior Care Facilities.

PURPOSE: To explore the impact of different acoustic stimuli of varying sound pressure levels on physical responses and the perception of senior adults. BACKGROUND: Noise-related health problems have been gaining increased attention as studies have shown an association with negative impacts on physiological parameters resulting in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. However, a gap in knowledge exists in exploring the impact of exposure to sound recordings in the actual environment on physiological measurements. METHODS: Five acoustic stimuli were recorded in real life and 120 senior adults listened to them in a sound treated room to analyze the impacts of low-, middle-, and high-decibel sounds on their heart rate, blood pressure, and perception. The physical responses, heart rate, and blood pressure were measured during the sound exposure, and questionnaires were administered afterward. RESULTS: Exposure to different sounds resulted in fluctuations and an inconsistent trend in heart rate, systolic pressure, and diastolic pressure. According to the physical measures and subjective evaluations, sport sounds and traffic noise were given the lowest rating for preference, while music was perceived as the most comfortable. CONCLUSIONS: A sound pressure level below 55-65 dB(A) correlates with increased comfort and less increase in heart rate and blood pressure. Senior adults with normal hearing preferred and were most comfortable with music, while those with severe hearing impairment preferred entertainment sounds the most.

Corrigendum: Construction of smart older adults care service model driven by primary health care.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1157758.].

Construction of smart older adults care service model driven by primary health care.

In recent years, with the arrival of an overall aging population, how to provide for the elderly has become the focus of government departments and society. The traditional elderly care service model has problems such as backward construction of information platforms, low quality of elderly care services, and "digital divide". For this reason, based on grassroots medical and health care, this paper improves the quality of elderly care services by establishing a smart elderly care service model. Through experiments, it can be found that compared with the traditional elderly care service model, the intelligent elderly care service model has an absolute advantage in the identification of nursing data. The recognition accuracy rate of the smart elderly care service model for all kinds of daily care data is above 94%, while the recognition accuracy rate of the traditional elderly care service model is below 90%. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the smart elderly care service model driven by primary medical care and health.

Factors influencing the satisfaction of community senior care services in China: an analysis based on an extended Anderson model.

Community-based senior care, as a convenient and promising care model, has gradually been accepted by the public. However, community services developed to facilitate older adults often fail to achieve the expected effect. With the fast-growing aging population in China, the problems of underutilization and low service satisfaction of senior care facilities need to be resolved urgently. In this study, we further developed an extended Anderson behavior model by incorporating social psychological factors, and the vertical and horizontal fairness perceptions. In addition, a binary logistic regression model was used to analyze factors affecting the satisfaction of older adults in life care services, health care services, and mental and spiritual comfort services. The study used data from a survey of 322 urban area seniors in Shaanxi Province. The results showed that factors influencing older adults' satisfaction of different service categories are different. Moreover, with the addition of the social psychological factors, we observed that the vertical fairness perception of the survey respondents affected their satisfaction of senior care services significantly more than the horizontal fairness perception.

Construction of Talent Competency Model for Senior Care Professionals in Intelligent Institutions.

As the problem of the aging population becomes more and more serious, building an intelligent senior care service model and optimizing the senior care service industry become key to the development of the senior care service industry. The key to developing intelligent senior care services is to improve the overall senior care personnel quality and construct a competency model of intelligent institutional senior care professionals. This study used literature research and interviews to establish 31 relevant institutional senior care professional talent competency elements. We proposed six research propositions, prepared questionnaires for empirical analysis, and took caregivers of senior care institutions implementing intelligent management in some cities in Hebei Province, China as samples. This study established and validated 28 competency quality index models of senior care professionals in intelligent institutions in four dimensions: nursing knowledge, professional ability, personal quality, and professional attitude through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Based on the index system, this study suggests three aspects: improving the talent recruitment and selection mechanism, talent training and development mechanism, and assessment and incentive mechanism. The traditional talent competency model only focuses on fundamental aspects, such as competence. This study comprehensively establishes an evaluation model from four aspects, providing theoretical and practical significance for selecting and developing talents in intelligent institutions.

Technological risks and ethical implications of using robots in long-term care.

Introduction: The pandemic provides a unique opportunity to examine new directions in innovative technological approaches in long-term care (LTC) homes. While robotics could enhance staff capacity to provide care, there are potential technology risks and ethical concerns involved in technology use among older people residing in communal aged care homes. This qualitative descriptive study explores the technological risks and ethical issues associated with the adoption of robots in the specific context of LTC homes. Methods: The research team including patient and family partners employed purposive and snowballing methods to recruit 30 LTC participants: frontline interdisciplinary staff, operational leaders, residents and family members, and ethics experts in dementia care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted. Thematic analysis was performed to identify themes that capture empirical experiences and perspectives of a diverse group of LTC stakeholders about robotic use. Results: Technological risks include safety, increased workload, privacy, cost and social justice, and human connection. The findings offer practical insights based on the LTC perspective to contribute to the robot ethics literature. We propose a list of pragmatic recommendations, focusing on six principles (ETHICS): Engagement of stakeholders, Technology benefit and risk assessment, Harm mitigation, Individual autonomy, Cultural safety and justice, Support of privacy. Conclusions: There is both a growing interest as well as fear in using robotics in LTC. Practice leaders need to reflect on ethical considerations and engage relevant stakeholders in making technology decisions for everyday care.