Dementia

BACKGROUND: The use of life stories in dementia care has been described as a way of seeing every person as an individual, looking beyond their dementia. Life stories have become synonymous with high-quality care, while in Sweden their mere existence in dementia care settings is taken to indicate quality in national comparisons. Such life stories are often standardised, generated by a family member answering predetermined questions in a template. AIM AND METHODS: Using a constructionist approach, this study will (1) chart what versions of a person's life story the templates produce, and (2) establish the intended purpose of such life stories, as communicated by the templates...

BACKGROUND: The life expectancy of people with a learning disability is increasing and with this comes a greater risk of developing dementia. Dementia poses new challenges for both family and formal learning disability carers as they try to support dementia's progressive nature and quality of life for their care recipient. This qualitative systematic review explores the evidence base of family and formal carers' experiences and needs of caring for someone with both a learning disability and dementia...

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Despite the impact of dementia on close care relationships, accessible therapeutic services for people living with dementia and their care partners remain scarce. Further, there is an increasing demand for online services, highlighting the need for ongoing telehealth research. This study aimed to explore the experiences of people living with dementia and their informal and formal care partners following participation in a 10-week online therapeutic songwriting program...

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Purpose: Dementia support workers (DSWs) are employed to improve the hospital care for patients living with dementia. An evaluation sought to understand the perspectives and experiences of DSWs and related healthcare practitioners within one health board, to identify any role ambiguity and inform future role development. Design/methodology/approach: Framework analysis was used to synthesise data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with dementia support workers, and a wider group of related healthcare practitioners...

Objective: Close relationships influence health and quality of life outcomes for people with dementia and their families. Yet, we know little on the role of different relationship domains with quantitative methods having proved to have limitations in this research field. We aimed to study these relationship domains over time, contrasting the views of people with dementia and their family carers, making use of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Methods: A convergent mixed methods design was adopted, analysing longitudinal data (four time points over three years) from 66 dyads of Portuguese community-dwelling people with dementia and their primary carers, from the EU-Actifcare project sample...

BACKGROUND: The Dementia Severity Rating Scale (DSRS) is an informant report, dementia staging tool that is quick to administer and has previous been shown to differentiate between people with dementia and healthy controls. However, it is not clear how accurate the tool is screening against diagnostic criteria in middle-income settings. METHODS: Embedded within the STRiDE programme, older adults (aged ≥65 years) and their informants were randomly recruited from four sites across Indonesia and South Africa...

Psychoeducation with an active participation component is effective in facilitating family caregivers of people living with dementia to learn about the disease and gain relevant caregiving skills. However, research into the best strategies to promote active participation has received little attention, and the factors hindering active participation are also unknown. Therefore, the nine-stage framework of the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews was adopted to map and identify information about the active participation of family caregivers of people living with dementia in psychoeducation...

BACKGROUND: Parents with dementia require emotional, physical, psychological and financial support from their child caregivers to continue living at home. Daughter caregivers have been shown to be more involved in self-care and household tasks and to experience higher levels of distress than son caregivers. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the experience of daughter caregivers who provide informal care for a parent with dementia living in their own home...

Objective: This study aimed to examine the dilemmas encountered and the countermeasures adopted by case managers, who care for individuals with dementia. The study also aimed to identify the types of support and assistance case managers require. Methods: In this qualitative study, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 case managers, six from integrated dementia care centers and four from community-based dementia care centers in Taiwan. Results: The results are as follows: (1) Case managers providing services for individuals with dementia primarily encountered two major dilemmas, including cognitive differences (such as a lack of understanding of dementia, differences in ideas about dementia care, and distrust of the professionalism of case managers) with family members and their own insufficient professional capabilities, which made it difficult to reach a consensus on caregiving with family members and address the diverse conditions of individuals with dementia...

Data from the Vietnamese Aging and Care Survey (VACS) showed the high prevalence of disability, depressive symptoms, and cognitive impairment in older Vietnamese immigrants and refugees. We proposed a Community-Engaged Dementia Education Program to examine the Houston Vietnamese American community's literacy on dementia and develop a one-pager educational material. This is a cross-sectional, qualitative study (interviews and focus groups) using the Cultural Exchange Model as a conceptual framework. We interviewed fourteen Vietnamese key informants and assessed the community's knowledge of dementia based on Edwards' 9-stage Community Readiness Model...

INTRODUCTION: Providing integrated and evidence-based support to individuals and families following a diagnosis of dementia is essential in order to optimise their quality of life and assist them to live well. Memory clinics provide multidisciplinary services specialising in the assessment and post-diagnostic treatment of people with dementia. This study sought to identify current practices, barriers and facilitators to provision of postdiagnostic support and to obtain health professionals' opinion of ideal post-diagnostic support to be offered in Australian memory clinics...

OBJECTIVES: Vascular cognitive impairment is the second most common type of cognitive impairment. Care needs of community-dwelling people with vascular cognitive impairment and their caregivers have not been thoroughly studied. Therefore, we aimed to explore care needs of people with vascular cognitive impairment and their family caregivers. DESIGN: A qualitative interview study. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Participants were purposefully sampled community-dwelling people with vascular cognitive impairment and their family caregivers...

Caregivers of people living with dementia are pillars of the care community. Providing them with adequate support throughout their caregiving journey is essential to their quality of life and may also contribute to improving the care of people living with dementia. Nav-CARE (Navigation - Connecting, Advocating, Resourcing, Engaging) is a volunteer-led navigation program that provides support to older adults with life-limiting illnesses who are living in the community. However, Nav-CARE does not provide support directly to caregivers of people living with dementia...

Background: On average, people with dementia live with 4.6 additional health conditions. Additionally, two thirds of carers of people with dementia are spouses, and are also likely to live with multimorbidity, given that older age is strongly associated with an increase in health conditions. Consequently, living with dementia and multimorbidity is often a shared experienced as a couple. However, research has not explored how living with both dementia and multimorbidity may impact on couplehood. Method: We conducted a qualitive evidence review using a meta-ethnographic approach, to answer the following question: In what way (if any) does living with dementia and multimorbidity impact on couplehood? No papers were found on couplehood, dementia and multimorbidity, therefore the review consists of a meta-synthesis of couples' experiences of living with dementia in relation to couplehood, with an additional search for any data related to health within the qualitative findings...

BACKGROUND: People with early-stage dementia could benefit greatly from on-going spiritual support. However, health care professionals working in dementia care often do not have a clear idea of what such support might entail. There is a lack of tools that can help professionals provide such support. The Diamond conversation model used in palliative care could provide such a support. Aims: To develop the Diamond model for early-stage dementia so that professionals can provide better spiritual support...

The Family-centered Function Focused Care (Fam-FFC) intervention, is a nurse-family care partnership model aimed to improve the physical and cognitive recovery in hospitalized persons living with Alzheimer's Disease Related Dementias (ADRD) while improving the care partner's experiences. Discussions of patients' needs and preferences between nurses and the patient's close family members have been found to be useful in preventing excessive stress in persons with dementia, while lessening the anxiety of care partners...

BACKGROUND: Family caregivers are fundamental in supporting people living with dementia to remain at home, however, psychological distress can occur as a result of their caring role. Research into interventions for caregivers of people living with young-onset dementia, including their experience of and the mediating processes of such interventions, remains limited. METHODS: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis explored caregiver experiences and influence on caregiving of participating in a "Responding to Distress in Dementia" group...

Introduction: Tanzania is a low-income country with an increasing prevalence of dementia, which provides challenges for the existing healthcare system. People with dementia often don't receive a formal diagnosis, and with a lack of formal healthcare, are often predominantly supported by family relatives. There are very few published data relating to lived experiences of people with dementia in Tanzania. This study aimed to understand people with dementia, and their caregivers' experiences of living with dementia in Tanzania and the perceived needs of people with dementia...

People with dementia are excluded from research due to methodological challenges, stigma, and discrimination. Including perspectives of people with dementia across a spectrum of abilities is essential to understanding their perspectives and experiences. Engaging people living with dementia in qualitative research can require adaptation of methods.Qualitative research is typically considered when researchers seek to understand the perspectives, lived experiences, or opinions of individuals' social reality. This scoping review explores current use of adapted methods with people with dementia in qualitative research, including methods used and impacts on the engagement as it relates to meeting accessibility needs...