Factors Associated with Older Adults’ Physical Restraints by Licensed Caregivers Working at Day Care Centers

Since the National Long-Term Care Insurance of 2008, licensed caregivers for older adults have dramatically increased in Korea. In contrast to such trends, their care capacity has been socially concerned about violation against human rights such as elder abuse including physical restraints. The distinction between physical restraints and physical abuse is ambiguous at care settings which has brought in hot debate on the violation of human rights. Therefore, we investigated the extent to which caregivers’awareness of physical restraints and reasons of elder abuse and their witness of physical restraints are associated with their physical restraints on older adults. We used the secondary data collected from 3,859 licensed caregivers working at about 3,000 day care centers across the nation in 2017. First, we found that 10.7% of caregivers performed restrictive interventions. Second, the awareness of physical restraints, witness of others’physical restraints, and their own physical restraints are related to each other. Lastly, logistic regressions confirmed that caregivers’poor awareness of physical restraints, more witness of physical restraints by other caregivers, and higher perception of victim’s personality problems mainly causing elder abuse were more likely to increase their use of physical restraints. These findings suggest that care environment insensitive to human rights might lead to elder abuse by over-utilizing physical restraints. Also, it is fundamental to develop professional care culture of licensed caregivers towards person-centered care.