A Qualitative Exploration of the Needs of Community-Dwelling Patients Living with Moderate Dementia.

Tzu-Pei Yeh,Wei-Fen Ma,Hsing-Chia Chen

doi:10.3390/ijerph18178901

Abstract

Few studies have focused on developing a better understanding of the needs of patients with moderate-stage dementia. This study aimed to explore the needs of people living with moderate dementia and receiving home-care services from a local mental hospital. The study adopted a descriptive qualitative approach with purposive sampling to recruit patients with moderate dementia and receiving home-care services. Data were collected by face-to-face interviews and content analysis was used to interpret the experiences in the dialogue data. The results showed that the needs of people living with moderate dementia receiving home-care services contained four themes: the demand for company and care, the wish to recall familiar images, the need of reaffirming life purpose and value through reflection and reminiscence, and the desire for making autonomous end-of-life decisions. In addition to daily care, people living with moderate dementia crave companionship, expect meaningful exchanges of experiences to share their life, and have demands to have a voice in going through the final stage of life. The participants tended to focus more on issues related to the connections between living and dying. The results provide caregivers and home-care service providers with some insights into offering better care for people living with moderate dementia.

Highlights

Accepted: 18 August 2021With the constant rise in the elder population worldwide, dementia has become a global problem that is addressed by Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) [1]
This study aimed to explore the firsthand experiences of people living with moderate dementia to understand their needs in depth, and to make better care plans according to the research results and improve the quality of home-care services
On the inclusion criteria evaluation, all participants scored 2 in CDR, and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) ranged from 16 to 17 with an average of 16.71, which meant all of them had moderate dementia

Summary

Introduction

With the constant rise in the elder population worldwide, dementia has become a global problem that is addressed by Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) [1]. The prevalence of dementia has reached 6.99% in Asia [3] and was estimated by Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association (TADI) to be increasing at a steady pace in 25% of adults aged over 80 in Taiwan [4]. Dementia is a progressive and neurodegenerative disease [2]. It shows large differences in patients with mild and moderate dementia. Two scales are widely used to identify patients with mild or moderate dementia [5]: the Clinical Dementia

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion