BJSW Advance Access originally published online on March 31, 2009
British Journal of Social Work 2009 39(4):670-692; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcp037
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This article appears in the following British Journal of Social Work issue: Social work in the digital age Special Issue [View the issue table of contents]
Attitudes of Family and Professional Care-Givers towards the Use of GPS for Tracking Patients with Dementia: An Exploratory Study
Prof. Ruth Landau is associate professor at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Chair of the University's Institutional Review Board. Her research interests include: ethics of beginning and end of life issues, professional and research ethics. Dr. Shirli Werner is a post-doctoral researcher at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her current interest areas include: attitudes, disabilities, dual diagnosis, quality of life and family quality of life, ethics and issues related to use of GPS tracking devices. Prof. Gail K. Auslander is Zena Harman Chair in Social Work and Dean of the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She heads the Research Group on Social Work in Health Care and teaches and researches in the area of social work and health, and psychosocial aspects of health and disability. Dr. Noam Shoval is a senior lecturer at the department of geography, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests are: tourism and urban regeneration and the use of tracking technologies for analysis of pedestrians' time space activities. Dr. Jeremia Heinik is a geriatric psychiatrist, director of Margoletz Psychogeriatric Center, Ichilov Hospital, Tel Aviv and senior clinical lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. His research interests include: instruments for the evaluation of cognitive impairment in the elderly, competency issues in old age, with special reference to testamentary capacity.
Correspondence to Ruth Landau, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel. E-mail: mslanda{at}mscc.huji.ac.il
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Abstract |
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This study examined the attitudes of family and professional care-givers towards the use of advanced electronic tracking such as GPS (Global Positioning Systems) and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) for elderly people with dementia. The study revealed four principal findings. First, care-givers' views ranged from feeling obligated to use the tracking device for the sake of patients' safety through support of the use of the device for the sake of the care-givers' peace of mind and restricted support, to objection to the use of the device and respect for a person's autonomy. Second, family care-givers showed higher support for the use of GPS and RFID both for their own peace of mind and for the safety of the elder in their care. Professionals attached higher value to respect for a person's autonomy and restricted support for using GPS and RFID. Third, both family and professional care-givers agreed that the decision on tracking dementia patients should be an intra-family issue. Fourth, family care-givers attached more importance to the tracking device's characteristics and design, thus emphasizing that the tracking device must be considered by them as ‘user-friendly’. The implications of the results for social work are also discussed.
Keywords: elderly, dementia, wandering, GPS