Norwegian nursing home and home healthcare workers are open to the idea of integrating robots and remote sensors into nursing homes and seniors’ homes, according to a recent survey.
Though at first skeptical over the use of robots in a senior care setting, nurses interviewed eventually came around to the idea. Areas such as cleaning, laundry and patient lifting could be handled by robots, freeing up nurses to spend more time socially engaging the patients, respondents suggested. Most nurses involved in the survey said that robots should primarily be used as a way to increase the amount of patient-nurse interaction.
The idea of using sensors to help seniors stay in their homes was generally well received. But one nursing home worker suggested that seniors who require such monitoring should probably be in a nursing home. The July 30 report was conducted by SINTEF on behalf of the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities.
