| Summary: | Dementia is an umbrella term for several symptoms of impaired brain function. The person's behavior is affected when mental functions such as memory, attention, concentration and language are affected and the dementia patient can have difficulties to interpret sensory input. Communication is based a lot on body language. It is therefore important for the caregiver to seek eye contact with the patient in order to simplify communication and it can be of great help to show with the whole body what they mean and be able to point out things. Since people with dementia quickly can forget what happened just now it is common to say that they live in the present. This can lead to feelings of panic, if they can’t understand what is happening or how they got into the situation they now find themselves in. Since people with dementia are perceived to have a tendency to become anxious when transported by wheelchair the purpose of this project was to find a way to allow eye contact between caregivers and patients. By developing such a product the expectation is that their feeling of security will increase. Initial in the project a survey was fulfilled to investigate whether caregivers to dementia patients had experienced the problem that the patients could become worried when they couldn’t see who drove their wheelchairs. One part in the survey considered the nurses' view of a rear-facing wheelchair as a possible solution. With the help of various tools of product development the project resulted in a suggestion of a solution in which a removable push bar, if necessary, can be attached to the wheelchair so the wheelchair can be driven in the opposite direction, with the person with dementia and the driver facing each other. Conclusions that have been made in this project are that there is a need for a product that allows eye contact between a person with dementia and its caregiver. The resolution meets the objective to enable eye contact, next step is to produce a functional prototype that can be user-tested.
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