Detection of anxiety symptoms and disorders in older adults: a diagnostic accuracy systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Anxiety symptoms and disorders are common in older adults and often go undetected. A systematic review was completed to identify tools that can be used to detect anxiety symptoms and disorders in community-dwelling older adults. METHODS: MEDLINE, Embase and PsycINFO were searched using the search concepts anxiety, older adults and diagnostic accuracy in March 2023. Included articles assessed anxiety in community-dwelling older adults using an index anxiety tool and a gold standard form of anxiety assessment and reported resulting diagnostic accuracy outcomes. Estimates of pooled diagnostic accuracy outcomes were completed. RESULTS: Twenty-three anxiety tools were identified from the 32 included articles. Pooled diagnostic accuracy outcomes were estimated for the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI)-20 [n = 3, sensitivity = 0.89, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.70-0.97, specificity = 0.80, 95% CI = 0.67-0.89] to detect generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and for the GAI-20 (n = 3, cut off ≥ 9, sensitivity = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.62-0.83, specificity = 0.96, 95% CI = 0.74-1.00), Beck Anxiety Inventory (n = 3, sensitivity = 0.70, 95% CI = 0.58-0.79, specificity = 0.60, 95% CI = 0.51-0.68) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-A) (n = 3, sensitivity = 0.78, 95% CI = 0.60-0.89, specificity = 0.76, 95% CI = 0.60-0.87) to detect anxiety disorders in clinical samples. CONCLUSION: The GAI-20 was the most studied tool and had adequate sensitivity while maintaining acceptable specificity when identifying GAD and anxiety disorders. The GAI-20, GAI-Short Form and HADS-A tools are supported for use in detecting anxiety in community-dwelling older adults. Brief, self-rated and easy-to-use tools may be the best options for anxiety detection in community-dwelling older adults given resource limitations. Clinicians may consider factors including patient comorbidities and anxiety prevalence when selecting a tool and cut off.

Implementation of the Dementia Isolation Toolkit in long-term care improves awareness but does not reduce moral distress amongst healthcare providers.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare providers may experience moral distress when they are unable to take the ethically or morally appropriate action due to real or perceived constraints in delivering care, and this psychological stressor can negatively impact their mental health, leading to burnout and compassion fatigue. This study describes healthcare providers experiences of moral distress working in long-term care settings during the COVID-19 pandemic and measures self-reported levels of moral distress pre- and post-implementation of the Dementia Isolation Toolkit (DIT), a person-centred care intervention designed for use by healthcare providers to alleviate moral distress. METHODS: Subjective levels of moral distress amongst providers (e.g., managerial, administrative, and front-line employees) working in three long-term care homes was measured pre- and post-implementation of the DIT using the Moral Distress in Dementia Care Survey and semi-structured interviews. Interviews explored participants' experiences of moral distress in the workplace and the perceived impact of the intervention on moral distress. RESULTS: A total of 23 providers between the three long-term care homes participated. Following implementation of the DIT, subjective levels of moral distress measured by the survey did not change. When interviewed, participants reported frequent experiences of moral distress from implementing public health directives, staff shortages, and professional burnout that remained unchanged following implementation. However, in the post-implementation interviews, participants who used the DIT reported improved self-awareness of moral distress and reductions in the experience of moral distress. Participants related this to feeling that the quality of resident care was improved by integrating principals of person-centered care and information gathered from the DIT. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the prevalence and exacerbation of moral distress amongst providers during the pandemic and the myriad of systemic factors that contribute to experiences of moral distress in long-term care settings. We report divergent findings with no quantitative improvement in moral distress post-intervention, but evidence from interviews that the DIT may ease some sources of moral distress and improve the perceived quality of care delivered. This study demonstrates that an intervention to support person-centred isolation care in this setting had limited impact on overall moral distress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Variation and Correlation of Potential Unintended Consequences of Antipsychotic Reduction in Ontario Nursing Homes Over Time.

BACKGROUND: Potentially inappropriate antipsychotic use has declined in nursing homes over the past decade; however, increases in the documentation of relevant clinical indications (eg, delusions) and the use of other psychotropic medications have raised concerns about diagnosis upcoding and medication substitution. Few studies have examined how these trends over time vary across and within nursing homes, information that may help to support antipsychotic reduction efforts. OBJECTIVE: To jointly model facility-level time trends in potentially inappropriate antipsychotic use, antidepressant use, and the indications used to define appropriate antipsychotic use. RESEARCH DESIGN: We conducted a repeated cross-sectional study of all nursing homes in Ontario, Canada between April 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019 using linked health administrative data (N=649). Each nursing home's quarterly prevalence of potentially inappropriate antipsychotic use, antidepressant use, and relevant indications were measured as outcome variables. With time as the independent variable, multivariate random effects models jointly estimated time trends for each outcome across nursing homes and the correlations between time trends within nursing homes. RESULTS: We observed notable variations in the time trends for each outcome across nursing homes, especially for the relevant indications. Within facilities, we found no correlation between time trends for potentially inappropriate antipsychotic and antidepressant use ( r =-0.0160), but a strong negative correlation between time trends for potentially inappropriate antipsychotic use and relevant indications ( r =-0.5036). CONCLUSIONS: Nursing homes with greater reductions in potentially inappropriate antipsychotics tended to show greater increases in the indications used to define appropriate antipsychotic use-possibly leading to unmonitored use of antipsychotics.

Changes in the Initiation of Antipsychotics and Trazodone Over Time: A Cohort Study of New Admissions to Nursing Homes in Ontario, Canada.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether trazodone is being initiated in lieu of antipsychotics following antipsychotic reduction efforts, this study described changes in medication initiation over time. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of new admissions to nursing homes in Ontario, Canada between April 2010 and December 2019 using health administrative data (N = 61,068). The initiation of antipsychotic and trazodone use was compared by year of admission using discrete time survival analysis and stratified by history of dementia. RESULTS: Relative to residents admitted in 2014, antipsychotic initiation significantly decreased in later years (e.g., 2017 admission year hazard odds ratio [HOR2017]=0.72 [95% confidence interval (95%CI)=0.62-0.82]) while trazodone initiation modestly increased (e.g., HOR2017=1.09 [95%CI=0.98-1.21]). The relative increase in trazodone initiation was larger among residents with dementia (e.g., HOR2017Dem =1.22 [95%CI=1.07-1.39]). CONCLUSIONS: Differences in which medications were started following nursing home admission were observed and suggest trazodone may be initiated in lieu of antipsychotics.

Evaluating the ability of a predictive vision-based machine learning model to measure changes in gait in response to medication and DBS within individuals with Parkinson's disease.

INTRODUCTION: Gait impairments in Parkinson's disease (PD) are treated with dopaminergic medication or deep-brain stimulation (DBS), although the magnitude of the response is variable between individuals. Computer vision-based approaches have previously been evaluated for measuring the severity of parkinsonian gait in videos, but have not been evaluated for their ability to identify changes within individuals in response to treatment. This pilot study examines whether a vision-based model, trained on videos of parkinsonism, is able to detect improvement in parkinsonian gait in people with PD in response to medication and DBS use. METHODS: A spatial-temporal graph convolutional model was trained to predict MDS-UPDRS-gait scores in 362 videos from 14 older adults with drug-induced parkinsonism. This model was then used to predict MDS-UPDRS-gait scores on a different dataset of 42 paired videos from 13 individuals with PD, recorded while ON and OFF medication and DBS treatment during the same clinical visit. Statistical methods were used to assess whether the model was responsive to changes in gait in the ON and OFF states. RESULTS: The MDS-UPDRS-gait scores predicted by the model were lower on average (representing improved gait; p = 0.017, Cohen's d = 0.495) during the ON medication and DBS treatment conditions. The magnitude of the differences between ON and OFF state was significantly correlated between model predictions and clinician annotations (p = 0.004). The predicted scores were significantly correlated with the clinician scores (Kendall's tau-b = 0.301, p = 0.010), but were distributed in a smaller range as compared to the clinician scores. CONCLUSION: A vision-based model trained on parkinsonian gait did not accurately predict MDS-UPDRS-gait scores in a different PD cohort, but detected weak, but statistically significant proportional changes in response to medication and DBS use. Large, clinically validated datasets of videos captured in many different settings and treatment conditions are required to develop accurate vision-based models of parkinsonian gait.

Privacy-protecting behaviours of risk detection in people with dementia using videos.

BACKGROUND: People living with dementia often exhibit behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia that can put their and others' safety at risk. Existing video surveillance systems in long-term care facilities can be used to monitor such behaviours of risk to alert the staff to prevent potential injuries or death in some cases. However, these behaviours of risk events are heterogeneous and infrequent in comparison to normal events. Moreover, analysing raw videos can also raise privacy concerns. PURPOSE: In this paper, we present two novel privacy-protecting video-based anomaly detection approaches to detect behaviours of risks in people with dementia. METHODS: We either extracted body pose information as skeletons or used semantic segmentation masks to replace multiple humans in the scene with their semantic boundaries. Our work differs from most existing approaches for video anomaly detection that focus on appearance-based features, which can put the privacy of a person at risk and is also susceptible to pixel-based noise, including illumination and viewing direction. We used anonymized videos of normal activities to train customized spatio-temporal convolutional autoencoders and identify behaviours of risk as anomalies. RESULTS: We showed our results on a real-world study conducted in a dementia care unit with patients with dementia, containing approximately 21 h of normal activities data for training and 9 h of data containing normal and behaviours of risk events for testing. We compared our approaches with the original RGB videos and obtained a similar area under the receiver operating characteristic curve performance of 0.807 for the skeleton-based approach and 0.823 for the segmentation mask-based approach. CONCLUSIONS: This is one of the first studies to incorporate privacy for the detection of behaviours of risks in people with dementia. Our research opens up new avenues to reduce injuries in long-term care homes, improve the quality of life of residents, and design privacy-aware approaches for people living in the community.

A pilot observational study of gait changes over time before and after an unplanned hospital visit in long-term care residents with dementia.

BACKGROUND: Older adults with dementia living in long-term care (LTC) have high rates of hospitalization. Two common causes of unplanned hospital visits for LTC residents are deterioration in health status and falls. Early detection of health deterioration or increasing falls risk may present an opportunity to intervene and prevent hospitalization. There is some evidence that impairments in older adults' gait, such as reduced gait speed, increased variability, and poor balance may be associated with hospitalization. However, it is not clear whether changes in gait are observable and measurable before an unplanned hospital visit and whether these changes persist after the acute medical issue has been resolved. The objective of this study was to examine gait changes before and after an unplanned acute care hospital visit in people with dementia. METHODS: We performed a secondary analysis of quantitative gait measures extracted from videos of natural gait captured over time on a dementia care unit and collected information about unplanned hospitalization from health records. RESULTS: Gait changes in study participants before hospital visits were characterized by decreasing stability and step length, and increasing step variability, although these changes were also observed in participants without hospital visits. In an age and sex-adjusted mixed effects model, gait speed and step length declined more quickly in those with a hospital visit compared to those without. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide preliminary evidence that clinically meaningful longitudinal gait changes may be captured by repeated non-invasive gait monitoring, although a larger study is needed to identify changes specific to future medical events.

Nurse practitioner led implementation of huddles for staff in long term care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Staff working in long-term care (LTC) homes during COVID-19 frequently reported a lack of communication, collaboration, and teamwork, all of which are associated with staff dissatisfaction, health concerns, lack of support and moral distress. Our study introduced regular huddles to support LTC staff during COVID-19, led by a Nurse Practitioner (NP). The objectives were to evaluate the process of huddle implementation and to examine differences in outcomes between categories of staff (direct care staff, allied care and support staff, and management) who attended huddles and those who did not. METHODS: All staff and management at one LTC home (< 150 beds) in Ontario, Canada were included in this pre-experimental design study. The process evaluation used a huddle observation tool and focused on the dose (duration, frequency) and fidelity (NP's adherence to the huddle guide) of implementation. The staff attending and non-attending huddles were compared on outcomes measured at post-test: job satisfaction, physical and mental health, perception of support received, and levels of moral distress. The outcomes were assessed with validated measures and compared between categories of staff using Bayesian models. RESULTS: A total of 42 staff enrolled in the study (20 attending and 22 non-attending huddles). Forty-eight huddles were implemented by the NP over 15 weeks and lasted 15 min on average. Huddles were most commonly attended by direct care staff, followed by allied care/support, and management staff. All huddles adhered to the huddle guide as designed by the research team. Topics most often addressed during the huddles were related to resident care (46%) and staff well-being (34%). Differences were found between staff attending and non-attending huddles: direct care staff attending huddles reported lower levels of overall moral distress, and allied care and support staff attending huddles perceived higher levels of support from the NP. CONCLUSIONS: NP-led huddles in LTC homes may positively influence staff outcomes. The process evaluation provided some understanding of why the huddles may have been beneficial: the NP addressed resident care issues which were important to staff, encouraged a collaborative approach to solving issues on the unit, and discussed their well-being. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05387213, registered on 24/05/2022.

Voice your values, a tailored advance care planning intervention in persons living with mild dementia: A pilot study.

BACKGROUND: In the early stage of dementia, persons living with dementia (PLwD) can identify their values and wishes for future care with a high degree of accuracy and reliability. However, there is a paucity of research to guide best practices on how best to incorporate advance care planning (ACP) in older adults diagnosed with mild dementia and therefore only a minority of these individuals participate in any ACP discussions. We developed an intervention called Voice Your Values (VYV) that healthcare professionals can implement to identify and document the values of PLwD and their trusted individuals such as friends or family. PURPOSE: This single-group pre-test and post-test design aimed to determine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the VYV intervention. METHODS: A convenience sample of 21 dyads of PLwD and their trusted individuals were recruited from five outpatient geriatric clinics. The tailored VYV intervention was delivered to the dyads over two sessions using videoconferencing. RESULTS: In terms of feasibility, the recruitment rate was lower (52%) than the expected 60%; the retention rate was high at 94%, and the intervention fidelity was high based on the audit of 20% of the sessions. In terms of preliminary efficacy, PLwD demonstrated improvement in ACP engagement (p = <0.01); trusted individuals showed improvements in decision-making confidence (p = 0.01) and psychological distress (p = 0.02); whereas a minimal change was noted in their dementia knowledge (p = 0.22). CONCLUSION: Most of the feasibility parameters were met. A larger sample along with a control group, as well as a longitudinal study, are requisite to rigorously evaluate the efficacy of the promising VYV intervention. There is emerging evidence that people living with mild dementia can effectively participate in identifying and expressing their values and wishes for future care.

Staff perceptions of the consequences of COVID-19 on quality of dementia care for residents in Ontario long-term care homes.

OBJECTIVES: The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated extensive infection control measures in long-term care (LTC) and had a significant impact on staffing and services. Anecdotal reports indicate that this negatively affected LTC residents' quality of care and wellbeing, but there is scarce evidence on the effects of COVID-19 on quality of dementia care in LTC. METHODS: From December 2020 to March 2021, we conducted a cross-sectional online survey among staff who worked in LTC homes in Ontario, Canada. Survey questions examined staffs' perceptions of the impact of COVID-19 on dementia quality of care during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (beginning 1 March 2020). RESULTS: There were a total of 227 survey respondents; more than half reported both worsened overall quality of care (51.3%) and worsening of a majority of specific quality of care measures (55.5%). Measures of cognitive functioning, mobility and behavioural symptoms were most frequently described as worsened. Medical and allied/support staff had the highest odds of reporting overall worsened quality of care, while specialized behavioural care staff and those with more experience in LTC were less likely to. LTC home factors including rural location and smaller size, staffing challenges, higher number of outbreaks and less COVID-19 preparedness were associated with increased odds of perceived worsening of quality of dementia care outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and related effects such as inadequate staffing may have contributed to poor quality of care and outcomes for those with dementia in LTC.

Barriers and facilitators to person-centred infection prevention and control: results of a survey about the Dementia Isolation Toolkit.

BACKGROUND: People working in long-term care homes (LTCH) face difficult decisions balancing the risk of infection spread with the hardship imposed on residents by infection control and prevention (ICP) measures. The Dementia Isolation Toolkit (DIT) was developed to address the gap in ethical guidance on how to safely and effectively isolate people living with dementia while supporting their personhood. In this observational study, we report the results of a survey of LTCH staff on barriers and facilitators regarding isolating residents, and the impact of the DIT on staff moral distress. METHODS: We completed an online cross-sectional survey. Participants (n = 207) were staff working on-site in LTCH in Ontario, Canada since March 1, 2020, with direct or indirect experience with the isolation of residents. LTCH staff were recruited through provincial LTCH organizations, social media, and the DIT website. Survey results were summarized, and three groups compared, those: (1) unfamiliar with, (2) familiar with, and (3) users of the DIT. RESULTS: 61% of respondents identified distress of LTCH staff about the harmful effects of isolation on residents as a major barrier to effective isolation. Facilitators for isolation included delivery of 1:1 activity in the resident's room (81%) and designating essential caregivers to provide support (67%). Almost all respondents (84%) reported an increase in moral distress. DIT users were less likely to report an impact of moral distress on job satisfaction (odds ratio (OR) 0.41, 95% CI 0.19-0.87) with 48% of users reporting the DIT was helpful in reducing their level of moral distress. CONCLUSIONS: Isolation as an ICP measure in LTCH environments creates moral distress among staff which is a barrier to its effectiveness. ICP guidance to LTCH would be strengthened by the inclusion of a dementia-specific ethical framework that addresses how to minimize the harms of isolation on both residents and staff.

Indoor Location Data for Tracking Human Behaviours: A Scoping Review.

Real-time location systems (RTLS) record locations of individuals over time and are valuable sources of spatiotemporal data that can be used to understand patterns of human behaviour. Location data are used in a wide breadth of applications, from locating individuals to contact tracing or monitoring health markers. To support the use of RTLS in many applications, the varied ways location data can describe patterns of human behaviour should be examined. The objective of this review is to investigate behaviours described using indoor location data, and particularly the types of features extracted from RTLS data to describe behaviours. Four major applications were identified: health status monitoring, consumer behaviours, developmental behaviour, and workplace safety/efficiency. RTLS data features used to analyse behaviours were categorized into four groups: dwell time, activity level, trajectory, and proximity. Passive sensors that provide non-uniform data streams and features with lower complexity were common. Few studies analysed social behaviours between more than one individual at once. Less than half the health status monitoring studies examined clinical validity against gold-standard measures. Overall, spatiotemporal data from RTLS technologies are useful to identify behaviour patterns, provided there is sufficient richness in location data, the behaviour of interest is well-characterized, and a detailed feature analysis is undertaken.

Pandemic Preparedness and Beyond: Person-Centred Care for Older Adults Living in Long-Term Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The increasing complexity of residents' needs, emphasis on social distancing and limited access to high-quality support presented challenges to patient-centred care during the pandemic. Yet the pandemic created an opportunity to explore novel approaches to achieving person-centred care within long-term care (LTC). We share three projects designed to enhance care delivery in the context of the pandemic: to address personhood needs during outbreaks, to improve the quality of medical care and to deliver personalized palliative and end-of-life care using a prediction algorithm. These projects enabled better care during the pandemic and will continue to advance person-centred care beyond the pandemic.

Social connection and physical health outcomes among long-term care home residents: a scoping review.

BACKGROUND: Social connection is recognized as an important determinant of health and well-being. The negative health impacts of poor social connection have been reported in research in older adults, however, less is known about the health impacts for those living in long-term care (LTC) homes. This review seeks to identify and summarize existing research to address the question: what is known from the literature about the association between social connection and physical health outcomes for people living in LTC homes? METHODS: A scoping review guided by the Arksey & O'Malley framework was conducted. Articles were included if they examined the association between social connection and a physical health outcome in a population of LTC residents. RESULTS: Thirty-four studies were included in this review. The most commonly studied aspects of social connection were social engagement (n = 14; 41%) and social support (n = 10; 29%). A range of physical health outcomes were assessed, including mortality, self-rated health, sleep, fatigue, nutrition, hydration, stress, frailty and others. Findings generally support the positive impact of social connection for physical health among LTC residents. However, most of the studies were cross-sectional (n = 21; 62%) and, of the eleven cohort studies, most (n = 8; 73%) assessed mortality as the outcome. 47% (n = 16) were published from 2015 onwards. CONCLUSIONS: Research has reported positive associations between social connection and a range of physical health outcomes among LTC residents. These findings suggest an important role for social connection in promoting physical health. However, further research is needed to consider the influence of different aspects of social connection over time and in different populations within LTC homes as well as the mechanisms underlying the relationship with health.

Factors Affecting the Implementation, Use, and Adoption of Real-Time Location System Technology for Persons Living With Cognitive Disabilities in Long-term Care Homes: Systematic Review.

BACKGROUND: As the aging population continues to grow, the number of adults living with dementia or other cognitive disabilities in residential long-term care homes is expected to increase. Technologies such as real-time locating systems (RTLS) are being investigated for their potential to improve the health and safety of residents and the quality of care and efficiency of long-term care facilities. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to identify factors that affect the implementation, adoption, and use of RTLS for use with persons living with dementia or other cognitive disabilities in long-term care homes. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed English language literature indexed in MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and CINAHL from inception up to and including May 5, 2020. Search strategies included keywords and subject headings related to cognitive disability, residential long-term care settings, and RTLS. Study characteristics, methodologies, and data were extracted and analyzed using constant comparative techniques. RESULTS: A total of 12 publications were included in the review. Most studies were conducted in the Netherlands (7/12, 58%) and used a descriptive qualitative study design. We identified 3 themes from our analysis of the studies: barriers to implementation, enablers of implementation, and agency and context. Barriers to implementation included lack of motivation for engagement; technology ecosystem and infrastructure challenges; and myths, stories, and shared understanding. Enablers of implementation included understanding local workflows, policies, and technologies; usability and user-centered design; communication with providers; and establishing policies, frameworks, governance, and evaluation. Agency and context were examined from the perspective of residents, family members, care providers, and the long-term care organizations. CONCLUSIONS: There is a striking lack of evidence to justify the use of RTLS to improve the lives of residents and care providers in long-term care settings. More research related to RTLS use with cognitively impaired residents is required; this research should include longitudinal evaluation of end-to-end implementations that are developed using scientific theory and rigorous analysis of the functionality, efficiency, and effectiveness of these systems. Future research is required on the ethics of monitoring residents using RTLS and its impact on the privacy of residents and health care workers.

Screening for depression in older adults with cognitive impairment in the homecare setting: a systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: Previous systematic reviews have examined depression screening in older adults with cognitive impairment (CI) in outpatient and inpatient clinics, nursing homes, and residential care. Despite an increasing number of older adults with CI receiving care in their homes, less is known about best depression screening practices in homecare. The objective of this review is to identify evidence-based practices for depression screening for individuals with CI receiving homecare by assessing tool performance and establishing the current evidence for screening practices in this setting. METHODS: This review is registered under PROSPERO (ID: CRD42018110243). A systematic search was conducted using MEDLINE, EMBASE, Health and Psychosocial Abstracts, PsycINFO and CINAHL. The following criteria were used: assessment of depression at home in older adults (>55 years) with CI, where performance outcomes of the depression screening tool were reported. RESULTS: Of 5,453 studies, only three met eligibility criteria. These studies evaluated the Patient Health Questionnaire (n = 236), the Geriatric Depression Scale (n = 79) and the Mental Health Index (n = 1,444) in older adults at home with and without CI. Psychometric evaluation demonstrated moderate performance in the subsamples of people with CI. CONCLUSION: At present, there is insufficient evidence to support best practices in screening for depression in people with CI in homecare.

Behaviour assessment tools in long-term care homes in Canada: a survey.

OBJECTIVE: Many people living in long-term care homes (LTCH) experience changes in behaviour termed the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). The valid and reliable assessment of BPSD is essential to guide treatment and monitor the effect of interventions. The aim of this study was to identify behavioural assessment tools implemented in LTCH and factors that impact on their use in clinical care. METHODS: We completed an online mixed-design survey of 300 randomly selected Canadian LTCH between September and November 2018. Respondents were asked to report tools used, reasons for use, methods of administration, training/supports available, confidence in use and challenges faced. Survey results were summarized descriptively and the correlation between implementation supports and confidence examined. Free-text responses were analysed qualitatively. RESULTS: Of 300 LTCH invited to participate, 103 completed the survey. Homes reported using a mean 2.2 ± 1.1 (range 0-7) different tools. The two most commonly used tools were the Dementia Observation System (DOS) and Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI). Overall confidence in most aspects of tool use was reported to be high, with workload identified as the greatest challenge. Training and supports correlated with confidence in tool use. Qualitative findings indicate tools provide valuable data to understand behaviours, facilitate team communication, target interventions and track outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Behavioural assessment tools, in particular a direct observation tool, are widely used in clinical care in Canadian LTCH. Education, enhanced resources, leadership support and applications of technology represent opportunities to improve their use.

Concurrent validity of human pose tracking in video for measuring gait parameters in older adults: a preliminary analysis with multiple trackers, viewing angles, and walking directions.

BACKGROUND: Many of the available gait monitoring technologies are expensive, require specialized expertise, are time consuming to use, and are not widely available for clinical use. The advent of video-based pose tracking provides an opportunity for inexpensive automated analysis of human walking in older adults using video cameras. However, there is a need to validate gait parameters calculated by these algorithms against gold standard methods for measuring human gait data in this population. METHODS: We compared quantitative gait variables of 11 older adults (mean age = 85.2) calculated from video recordings using three pose trackers (AlphaPose, OpenPose, Detectron) to those calculated from a 3D motion capture system. We performed comparisons for videos captured by two cameras at two different viewing angles, and viewed from the front or back. We also analyzed the data when including gait variables of individual steps of each participant or each participant's averaged gait variables. RESULTS: Our findings revealed that, i) temporal (cadence and step time), but not spatial and variability gait measures (step width, estimated margin of stability, coefficient of variation of step time and width), calculated from the video pose tracking algorithms correlate significantly to that of motion capture system, and ii) there are minimal differences between the two camera heights, and walks viewed from the front or back in terms of correlation of gait variables, and iii) gait variables extracted from AlphaPose and Detectron had the highest agreement while OpenPose had the lowest agreement. CONCLUSIONS: There are important opportunities to evaluate models capable of 3D pose estimation in video data, improve the training of pose-tracking algorithms for older adult and clinical populations, and develop video-based 3D pose trackers specifically optimized for quantitative gait measurement.

Development and dissemination of an ethical guidance and person-centred isolation care planning tool to support the care of people with dementia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Long-term care (LTC) residents have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, both from the virus itself and the restrictions in effect for infection prevention and control. Many barriers exist in LTC to prevent the effective isolation of suspect or confirmed COVID-19 cases. Furthermore, these measures have a severe impact on the well-being of LTC residents. Our aim was to develop a guide for long-term care to address the ethical challenges associated with isolating dementia patients during the pandemic. The Dementia Isolation Toolkit (DIT) was developed by members of the research team in partnership with LTC stakeholders to address: 1) the practical challenges of isolating or quarantining people with dementia in a compassionate, safe, and effective manner; and 2) the need for ethical guidance to support decision-making regarding isolation and infection control in LTC, to prevent indecision and moral distress. To develop the DIT the team reviewed and synthesized the literature on pandemic ethics in a plain-language document, which was then reviewed by our partners and stakeholders. The final ethical guidance tool includes a discussion of the ethics around infection control measures in a pandemic, an ethical decision-making tool, and a person-centred isolation care planning tool. The ethical guidance tool has been downloaded more than 6500 times since it was published (bit.ly/dementiatoolkit), and has been disseminated internationally. The worksheets are being used during outbreaks to support care and decision-making, as well as proactively, to prepare for outbreaks by developing isolation care plans. There is a need for support for ethical decision-making in the context of a pandemic, particularly in settings such as LTC. Future studies will evaluate the implementation of the tool and its impact in addressing moral distress in health care providers in long-term care.

Achieving Safe, Effective, and Compassionate Quarantine or Isolation of Older Adults With Dementia in Nursing Homes.

Nursing homes are facing the rapid spread of COVID-19 among residents and staff and are at the centre of the public health emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As policy changes and interventions designed to support nursing homes are put into place, there are barriers to implementing a fundamental, highly effective element of infection control, namely the isolation of suspected or confirmed cases. Many nursing home residents have dementia, associated with impairments in memory, language, insight, and judgment that impact their ability to understand and appreciate the necessity of isolation and to voluntarily comply with isolation procedures. While there is a clear ethical and legal basis for the involuntary confinement of people with dementia, the potential for unintended harm with these interventions is high, and there is little guidance for nursing homes on how to isolate safely, while maintaining the human dignity and personhood of the individual with dementia. In this commentary, we discuss strategies for effective, safe, and compassionate isolation care planning, and present a case vignette of a person with dementia who is placed in quarantine on a dementia unit.