BACKGROUND Hospitalization, a sentinel event for many older persons, may mark a transition from independent living to either community-based or institutionalized long-term care. We determined the independent risk factors, including loss of function, of nursing home (NH) admission at hospital discharge and NH use at 3 months after hospital discharge among a diverse group of hospitalized older pe...

INTRODUCTION Research to date into assisted living technologies broadly consists of 3 generations: technical design, experimental trials and qualitative studies of the patient experience. We describe a fourth-generation paradigm: studies of assisted living technologies in their organisational, social, political and policy context. Fourth-generation studies are necessarily organic and emergent; ...

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY To determine the extent to which structures and processes of care in multilevel settings (independent living, assisted living, and nursing homes) result in stigma in assisted living and nursing homes. DESIGN AND METHODS Ethnographic in-depth interviews were conducted in 5 multilevel settings with 256 residents, families, and staff members. Qualitative analyses identified ...

PURPOSE In this study, Outcomes are described for patients receiving 'slow stream' rehabilitation care (called low tolerance long duration rehabilitation in Ontario, Canada consisting of approximately 5  h of rehabilitation weekly) for patients recovering from stroke in Ontario complex continuing care (CCC) (chronic) healthcare settings. METHOD In 2006-2007, 81 post-acute stroke patients reco...

This thesis addresses the problem of supporting independent living of elderly people through IT-based homecare services. Independent living is seen as one way to deal with the consequences of an aging population (especially in industrialized countries), which include rising healthcare expenditures and a required shortage of healthcare professionals. Our main goal is to improve the service creat...

OBJECTIVES Occupational therapy literature describes various independent living programs developed by occupational therapists and at times documents their effectiveness, yet none of the literature reviewed examined the involvement of occupational therapists in independent living programs. METHOD Directors of independent living programs in the United States were surveyed to ascertain their use...

Information and communication technology applications can help increase the independence and quality of life of older people, or people with disabilities who live in their own homes. A risk management framework is proposed to assist in selecting applications that match the needs and wishes of particular individuals. Risk comprises two components: the likelihood of the occurrence of harm and the...

Since 1985, the Tufts University-Boston School of Occupational Therapy has experimented with a service model for Level I fieldwork that uses independent living skills (ILS) groups. Under the off-site supervision of the course instructor and a Level I coordinator, students taking an Advanced Group Process course have run ILS groups in community agencies using faculty- and staff-developed group p...

BACKGROUND Older adults with concerns of falling show decrements of gait stability under single (ST) and dual task (DT) conditions. To compare the effects of a DT training integrating task managing strategies for independent living older adults with and without concern about falling (CoF) to a non-training control group on walking performance under ST and DT conditions. METHODS Single center ...

In Japan, there is no national 24-hour home care system for people with severe impairments. Despite this fact, a small number of people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy on home mechanical ventilation pursue independent living. Therefore, our aim was to better understand the process by which these individuals arrived at this goal for independence (i.e., choosing to live at home in Japan instead ...