Audrey

Audrey is a woman in her fifties who works part-time. She provides about 3 hours of help per week to her father, who lives in a long-term care hospital. She has been helping him for 4 years. Her father has a neurodegenerative disease and musculoskeletal pain in the upper limbs. He moves in a motorized wheelchair and has a transport wheelchair that Audrey uses to push him. She mainly helps with the management of papers (legal, mail, etc.) and money, she runs errands for him and accompanies him in his outings.

Needs Current Approaches Alternate Suggestions

 

What could be created?
1. Audrey would like a way to lighten the time-consuming task of paper management. Also, papers take a lot of physical space. Audrey receives her father’s mail at home, scans it and sends it to him by email. She takes care of his finances. She takes care of legal issues by accompanying her father to meetings.
2. Audrey would like to find someone to assist her father when she has to go away. When Audrey is away, her husband’s parents take care of her father when needed.
3. Audrey would like the job of transporting her father to be easier. She finds it physically demanding to transfer her father from the wheelchair to the car. Audrey’s husband helps her father get into the car.
4. Audrey would like her father to be able to cross through the door of her home when he comes to visit her. Audrey has installed a plank on the ground to make a slope. Thus she manages to roll the transport wheelchair over the threshold without difficulty.

 

 

5. Audrey would like to make outings with her father easier. Problems encountered: Putting on a coat when in a wheelchair and using a wheelchair on icy ground. Audrey puts on a very big coat to try to cover him completely without having to pull too hard. They go out less frequently in bad weather
6. Audrey would like to improve telephone communications with her father who has hearing problems. Audrey communicates with him by email most of the time.
Her father has a headset to listen to television.
7. Audrey would like to receive psychological support. Audrey is not interested in support groups.