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Updated: Sep 26, 2026
Quantifying Arms and Legs Contributions during Repetitive Electrically-Assisted Sit-To-Stand Exercise in Paraplegics: A Pilot Study
Published on: November 11, 2022
Humanitude care techniques for sit-to-stand assistance: a comparative observational study
Qi An1, Akito Tanaka2, Miwako Honda3
1Department of Human and Engineered Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan.
Background:
Supporting care recipients to actively participate in sit-to-stand movements helps preserve autonomy and self-efficacy while engaging residual physical capacity. Such approaches may reduce caregiver burden and prevent burnout. Humanitude, a person-centred care methodology, includes specific techniques for assisting standing that may promote active involvement of care recipients.
Objective:
To investigate how sit-to-stand assistance differs between Humanitude-trained caregivers, general nurses, and nursing students, and to examine its effects on the biomechanics and muscle activity of care recipients.
Design:
A comparative observational study.
Setting:
Two clinical training rooms in hospitals.
Participants:
The study included 59 caregivers (9 Humanitude-trained experts, 40 general nurses, and 10 nursing students) and two simulated care recipients.
Methods:
Each caregiver performed 10 repeated sit-to-stand assistance trials. Biomechanical metrics, including the care recipients' center of mass trajectory, independent weight-bearing ratio, and electromyographic activity of the knee and hip extensors, were measured. Trial data were averaged per pair. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were calculated to examine the relationship between independent weight-bearing ratio and muscle activity. Additional analyses compared assistance strategies across groups with different levels of independent weight bearing ratio.
Results:
Humanitude-trained caregivers facilitated significantly higher independent weight-bearing and hip extensor activity than both general nurses and nursing students, as well as higher knee extensor activity than general nurses. Across all caregivers, the independent weight-bearing ratio was positively correlated with knee extensor activity (Spearman's = .56, 95% CI: 0.36-0.72, p< .001) and hip extensor activity ( = .34, 95% CI: 0.09-0.55, p= .008). Care recipients in higher weight-bearing conditions were assisted by strategies that first prioritized anterior translation of the center of mass closer to the base of support.
Conclusions:
Humanitude-based sit-to-stand assistance promotes greater independent weight bearing and voluntary lower limb muscle activation in care recipients. These findings suggest that Humanitude techniques may enhance functional engagement and provide a biomechanical basis for person-centred nursing care.
Registration:
not registered.
