A survey of 1,048 people with experience providing care at home found that assistance with toileting was the item most frequently cited as the most difficult, accounting for 29.6% of all responses.
The survey asked 1,048 people nationwide aged 50 or older with experience providing care at home about the most difficult aspects of home care, compiling both multiple answers and rankings for the 3 items considered particularly difficult. The survey was intended to clarify where the burden of home care arises. The top multiple-answer responses were accompanying someone to hospital or going out at 39.7%, assistance with toileting at 38.9% and assistance with meals at 37.1%, with just under 40% of respondents selecting each item.
When respondents were asked to select only 1 item as the “most difficult,” assistance with toileting stood out at 29.6%, approximately 2.4 times the 12.4% for dealing with dementia symptoms, which ranked second. Assistance with toileting ranked first across all 21 categories, including sex, level of care required, the person receiving care, working style and personality type. The results also indicated that the size of the burden is closely associated with respondents’ feeling that “I have to do it myself” and their sense of time constraints.
The survey also confirmed a tendency for people who are inclined to shoulder responsibilities alone, feeling that “I have to do it myself,” to be more likely to feel that they cannot have time for themselves. This burden was particularly pronounced among respondents classified as completion-and-responsibility types. By level of care required, the proportion selecting assistance with toileting as the top item rose from 19.4% for Support Level 2 to 40.7% for Care Level 5.
The result that assistance with toileting ranked first may reflect not only the burden of the care itself and the practical burden of providing assistance, but also the time-related and psychological burden of its impact on daily routines. The article cites experiences such as incontinence at home, laundry and disruption of daily routines as specific examples of the burden of assistance with toileting, and explains that situations in which it is difficult to ask others for help can also intensify the perceived burden.