The aging rate in Japan shows an unprecedented upward trend compared to other countries. The proportion of predicted elderly in 2025 is expected to lead to a super-aged society with over 25 % over 75 years old.
On the one hand, the declining birthrate is progressing. Moreover, it is expected that elderly care that declines in self-care capacity will be a physical, social, and mental burden for care providers as the number of care providers is expected to decrease.
In this paper, the elderly who receive care and the family that provides care continue home care based on a philosophy of self-respect. Thus, we focus on "urination care," which is said to cause a high care burden, and the burden of care providers to obtain suggestions for the improvement of the support system.
Methods:
Questionnaires consisted of 21 items and 4 categories as follows: 1) Anxiety aggravation, 2) Insufficient sense of the expenses, 3) Restriction sense, and 4) Distress. They were mailed to 414 caregivers. Data were analyzed using Pearson, Spearman rank correlation, and t-test.
Ethical consideration: All participants were informed about this study, and local ethics committees of Hiroshima University gave permission (Admission number: 25-1).
Results:
One hundred eighty-nine participants returned the questionnaires (a 48.3% response rate). The mean age of caregivers was 66.9 years (SD ± 11.26, range 27–95) years. The results showed that 75.7% of frail persons used diapers, and 31.0% used the restroom.
1) Average: Each category (max 5) scored within 2.0 (1.4 for Anxiety aggravation, 1.6 for Insufficient sense of the expenses, 1.7 for Restriction sense, and 2.0 for Distress). It was suggested that the degree of care burden experienced by caregivers was not so high when they had to care for frail persons with urinary incontinence.
2) Relations with each category: There was no significant correlation among caregiver age, period of care, number of times of assistance in 1 day, and level of care. However, there was significantly lower correlation (0.403–0.472) between caregiver health conditions. There was a significant effect between the existence of support for the caregiver and Restriction sense (t = −2.566) or care burden with restroom users (t = −2.031).
Conclusion:
In addition to Japan's existing social support systeml gained suggestion that support is necessary .for elderly people to continue home care, 1) Securing human resources to open caregiver from exhaustion resulting from the feeling of restraint.2)Providing care techniques for reducing physical burden, and 3) mitigating urinary care product cost burden.