Snoezelen, structured reminiscence therapy and 10-minutes activation in long term care residents with dementia (WISDE): study protocol of a cluster randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: People with dementia are often inapproachable due to symptoms of their illness. Therefore nurses should establish relationships with dementia patients via their remaining resources and facilitate communication. In order to achieve this, different targeted non-pharmacological interventions are recommended and practiced. However there is no sufficient evidence about the efficacy of most of these interventions. A number of publications highlight the urgent need for methodological sound studies so that more robust conclusions may be drawn. METHODS/DESIGN: The trial is designed as a cluster randomized controlled trial with 20 nursing homes in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt (Germany) as the units of randomization. Nursing homes will be randomly allocated into 4 study groups consisting of 5 clusters and 90 residents: snoezelen, structured reminiscence therapy, 10-minutes activation or unstructured verbal communication (control group). The purpose is to determine whether the interventions are effective to reduce apathy in long-term care residents with dementia (N = 360) as the main outcome measure. Assessments will be done at baseline, 3, 6 and 12 months after beginning of the interventions. DISCUSSION: This trial will particularly contribute to the evidence on efficacy of non-pharmacological interventions in dementia care. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00653731.

[Developement of a standardised questionnaire. Specific interventions for people with dementia in long-term care]. / Entwicklung eines standardisierten Frage- bogens. Erhebung von demenzspezifischen Interventionen in der stationären Altenhilfe.

Caring for residents in long-term care who suffer from dementia is a special challenge. In the context of a research project a questionnaire for a mail survey in nursing homes was developed in order to describe specific nursing interventions for dementia in daily practice. The Questionnaire development was done according to acknowledged standards for questionnaire development, using means of operationalisation and external expert rating. Then the questionnaire was tested in a two-phase-pretest. Seven nursing homes were involved in a cognitive pretest. The standard-pretest was sent to 200 nursing homes (response rate 17.5 percent). Evaluation of the questionnaire drafts by means of two-phase-pretesting proved to be an effective measure for continuous improvement. The resulting questionnaire should be used to collect data about specific interventions for people suffering from dementia in residential long-term care.