What are the perceptions of people living with dementia, family carers, professionals and other potential stakeholders to the use of global positioning systems to promote safer outdoor walking?: a qualitative literature review

Abstract

Objective

Walking outdoors has many benefits which can improve quality of life for people living with dementia. However, due to the risk of getting lost, many people with dementia are denied the opportunity to be outdoors. There has been increased interest in using global positioning systems (GPS) to facilitate independent outdoor mobility for people with dementia, but this interest has been accompanied by ethical debate focussing on the rights of an individual with dementia to maintain privacy and autonomy. The objective was to establish what people, those with dementia, those who provide support for people with dementia and wider society perceive to be the issues around GPS use.

Method: An adapted qualitative systematic review was conducted between November 2018 and December 2018. Medical, social and technological databases were searched for papers with no date restriction. Initial search terms displayed nine hundred and sixty citations. Titles and if necessary abstracts were read to determine which studies might be potentially relevant. Forty papers were identified as potentially relevant and their abstracts and references examined. This produced a further four potential studies. Following application of the exclusion criteria thirty papers were eliminated.Fourteen were accepted, appraised and thematically analyzed.

Results: The ethical debate was reflected in the opinions of the study respondents. There was a willingness to relinquish some privacy for safety but people with dementia were not prepared to sacrifice their autonomy—believing they alone should decide whether GPS was appropriate.

Conclusion: GPS was felt to have the potential to facilitate independent outdoor walking, but systems need to be tailored to the individual. There is also a need to contradict negative societal perceptions of the ability of people with dementia to live a fulfilled life which is in danger of diminishing GPS’s potential to improve quality of life for people with dementia.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Whilst dementia is a disabling and incurable disease, taking advantage of technological developments such as GPS can diminish its negative impact.

• Appropriate development and use of GPSs offers the potential to enable people with dementia to explore the outdoors independently with subsequent improvement in self-confidence, independence and autonomy.

• Professionals working with people with dementia need to be aware of the GPS technology available and the ethical issues involved to support the use of GPS.

Keywords:

• Dementia
• global positioning systems
• outdoor mobility
• safety
• perceptions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.