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Plain Language Title
How assistive technology for individuals with disabilities can impact caregivers: A systematic planned out, orderly, regular review
Review go over, check Question
Does the use of assistive technology (AT) by individuals with disabilities have an impact on their caregivers? outcomes? What are the limitations of the evidence in this area? What kinds of caregiver outcomes have been studied?
Background
The American healthcare system relies heavily on informal caregivers?individuals (often family members) who provide give, offer, send, supply unpaid care for those with illnesses or disabilities. Informal caregivers may experience feel, have, go through a great deal of distress while providing care, including feelings of depression, isolation, anxiety, and burnout.
AT is defined as any tool that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. A few examples of AT include walkers and wheelchairs. The use of AT can reduce lower, cut, trim, dilute the need for human assistance among individuals with disabilities, suggesting that AT could reduce lower, cut, trim, dilute stress physical strain, mental strain, pressure, worry for caregivers.
Search Date
The search included articles published between 1990 and August 2011.
Study Characteristics
The review go over, check focused on informal caregivers of adults with physical body, bodily, real and/or cognitive disabilities. Informal caregivers are often friends, family members, or neighbors. Included studies had to present give, send, now, show, here original data describing outcomes of AT for caregivers. Studies were excluded if AT was not the main focus of the intervention, or if the study did not present give, send, now, show, here data on AT users separately from people who did not use AT.
Twenty-two studies met the inclusion criteria. Thirteen studies were quantitative, seven were qualitative, and two used mixed methods. All studies were conducted in North America or Europe. The most common types of AT in the included interventions were mobility-enhancing tools, medic-alert systems (to call for help), and AT for cognitive disabilities.
NIDILRR Affiliation
H133A060062: Consortium for Assistive Technology Outcomes Research (CATOR) II
Key Results
AT use may help caregivers by reducing some of the physical body, bodily, real and emotional effort of supporting individuals with a disability, but the quality of the evidence is too weak to make strong claims. None of the studies offered more than a low level of evidence of a positive impact of AT use on caregivers. There is some evidence that more complex forms of AT can create additional extra, added, more stress physical strain, mental strain, pressure, worry for caregivers.
Caregiver outcomes included stressors (such as hours of care or caregiver injury), psychological health outcomes, and whether providing care interfered with a caregiver?s other activities. Most studies focused on caregivers of aging adults, so there is a gap in knowledge about caregivers of younger age groups.
Use of Statistics
The review go over, check does not include statistical analysis.
Quality of Evidence
The quality of the evidence is weak. All of the quantitative (mostly survey-based) studies in the review go over, check were of poor quality, according to a standard scoring system. None of these studies used random selection or provided adequate enough, the right amount descriptions of the interventions. Most of the qualitative (mostly interview-based) studies were of good quality but not excellent quality.
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