The Impact of Implementing a Namaste Care Intervention in UK Care Homes for People Living with Advanced Dementia, Staff and Families.

Isabelle Latham,Jennifer Bray,Faith Frost,Nicola Jacobson-Wright,Dawn Brooker

doi:10.3390/ijerph17166004

Isabelle Latham, Jennifer Bray + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17166004

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Abstract

Care homes can struggle to provide optimal care for residents with advanced dementia. Namaste Care provides a structured daily programme of physical, sensory and emotional care delivered by regular care workers. A three-year, mixed method process study of implementation and impact created a manualised Namaste Care Intervention for UK care homes (NCI-UK). This article reports on the impact of NCI-UK delivered consistently in five care homes for 12–24 weeks. Impact for residents was assessed using, pre-post data, showing significant positive effects for QUALID (t = 2.92, p = 0.01, n = 31) and CMAI (t = 3.31, p = 0.002, n = 32), alongside many qualitative examples of positive impacts on wellbeing, responsiveness and communication. Pre-post staff questionnaire data (n = 20) were not significant. Qualitative data indicated that NCI-UK is a positive staff experience, providing sense of purpose, improved wellbeing and relationships. The care homes reported benefiting from implementing NCI-UK in terms of reputation and quality improvement. Family interviews were also positive, relating to seeing the difference, improving relationships and being involved. NCI-UK can therefore be recommended as an impactful intervention for residents, staff and families.

Highlights

The European Association for Palliative Care suggests that optimal palliative dementia care should provide relief to the emotional, psychological, relational and physical challenges that people with advanced dementia face [1,2]
People living with advanced dementia often become isolated, which leads to depression, withdrawal, and negative health outcomes
Whilst the nursing home registration of Elm Gardens may have helped this wider impact, it is important to note that Elm Gardens worked hard to explicitly translate elements of Namaste Care Intervention for UK care homes (NCI-UK) from their dementia unit and specific residents to other non-dementia areas of the home, suggesting that some focussed effort may be required to ‘activate’ NCI-UK as part of a whole-home improvement journey. This process implementation evaluation study demonstrated that Namaste Care has a positive impact on residents, families, staff and the care home environment, when it is implemented on a daily basis in UK residential and nursing homes

Summary

Introduction

The European Association for Palliative Care suggests that optimal palliative dementia care should provide relief to the emotional, psychological, relational and physical challenges that people with advanced dementia face [1,2]. A review of the quality of scientific evidence underpinning the various activity intervention components of Namaste Care was undertaken [8]. This demonstrated a good evidence base for including these activities within Namaste Care for people living with advanced dementia. Gentle and relaxing sounds or music are used to create an atmosphere rather than providing entertainment.

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