| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立台北護理學院 === 長期照護研究所 === 98 === Backgroud：Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association estimates the population of people with dementia to be around 170,000 in this country. The number has been growing steadily. People with dementia may experience difficulties in daily living, jobs, and social activities, needing long-term care. Currently, the majority of demented people are cared for by their family members. Family caregivers are nonetheless short in supply due to women’s participation in labor forces and changes in the family structure. Caregiving families need a plethora of supports in order to provide care continuously and to keep their demented members at home to avoid premature entry into institutions. One of the primary supports currently available pertains to home helper services. Unfortunately, home care workers are poorly prepared, avoid providing care, or terminate services prematurely due to difficulties in handling demented people with behavioral problems. These problems have led to a gap between the demands for care and home helper supplies. It is therefore crucial to examine the factors contributing to home helpers’ intention to provide care to the demented people. Few previous studies have tapped the subject.
Materials and Methods: The study was guided by the theory of planned behavior. The theory postulated that behavior intentions was the function of three factors, attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. This study was cross-sectional in design. The subjects were drawn from home care agencies in the Taipei County. These agencies were under the commission by the County Social Welfare Department to provide home helper services to the dependent people within the county.
A total of 574 home helpers were recruited. 550 of them agreed to participate in the study. A battery of self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. 499 of them completed the questionnaires, accounting for 91.6% of completion rate. Path analysis was employed to analyze data to determine whether they fitted the paths by the theory.
Results: The result of path analysis indicated that the three paths from worker attitude toward the behavior, their subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control to behavior intention were all turned out to be significant. Their correlations were all positive in direction. The theoretical model of behavior intention was thus confirmed in this data.
Among the three paths, subjective norm to behavior intention was the strongest with attitude toward the behavior coming on the second, and perceived behavioral control ranking as the last. The result pointed to the needs to boost the all three factors in the home care workers, particularly subjective norms which have been shaped particularly by home care supervisors.
Conclusion： Home care workers or helpers need more encouragement and compliments from supervisors or staffs to inaugurate a willingness to provide care for the demented and to maintain their commitment persistently. They also need more training and preparation to stay committed to providing care. Their intention to provide care may not take place and their commitment may be wearing thin without the good coordination from families. Families with demented members need more awareness to make possible of an early detection, early diagnosis, and timely support for their demented members.
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