Best Practice Guidance
Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia

Guidance

Understanding how social robots positively impact nursing home residents as well as analysing practical challenges are important when implementing robotic assistive technology in nursing homes

Explanation and examples

An important facilitating factor to the acceptance of social robots in nursing homes is understanding and seeing how social robots positively impact residents, for example by improving the communication, decreasing loneliness, providing joy to residents, calming agitated residents or generally increasing their wellbeing. Understanding these benefits will facilitate the acceptance of social robots by staff as well as by relatives, but is also important for the resident to accept the social robot, as their acceptance will be influenced by the views and attitudes of staff and relatives.

On the other hand, one of the key hindering factors to the acceptance of social robots in nursing homes are practicalities of everyday life in the nursing home, such as storage, hygiene, finding a quiet place, scheduling time for robot use or the need to charge the robot.

We conclude, that applying an acceptance model of social robots (here the Almere Model) is an interesting and feasible way to trace facilitators and barriers of implementation of social technology in nursing homes, where involvement in social activities and enhancing positive experiences are important foci of interventions to improve social health.