Family involvement in the Namaste care family program for dementia: A qualitative study on experiences of family, nursing home staff, and volunteers.

BACKGROUND: Family caregivers may experience difficulty maintaining meaningful contact with a relative with advanced dementia. Nevertheless, some family caregivers prefer to remain involved in the care of their relative after admission to a nursing home. Family involvement in the care is important but little is known about how this works in practice and what exactly is needed to improve it. OBJECTIVES: To examine experiences of family caregivers, staff and volunteers with family caregiver participation in the Namaste Care Family program, a psychosocial intervention to increase quality of life for people with advanced dementia that may help family caregivers to connect with their relative. Further, we aimed to examine facilitators of and barriers to family participation. DESIGN: Descriptive exploratory qualitative design using semi-structured interviews. SETTING: Ten nursing homes in the Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS: Ten family caregivers, 31 staff members and 2 volunteers who participated in the Namaste Care Family Program. METHODS: Qualitative interview study using thematic analysis. Interviews were held with family caregivers, staff members, and volunteers about their experiences with the Namaste Care Family program. RESULTS: In general, family caregivers experienced their involvement in the Namaste Care Family program as positive, particularly the meaningful connections with their relative. However, putting family involvement into practice was challenging. We identified three themes covering facilitators for and barriers to participation: (1) Preferences of family caregivers for activities with their relative (Activities): practical activities matching one's own interests were seen as facilitating, while perceived lack of knowledge and reluctance to engage with other residents were barriers. (2) Communication between family caregivers, staff and volunteers (Communication): providing clear information about the program to family caregivers facilitated their involvement. Feeling insecure inhibited family involvement. (3) Personal context of family caregivers (Personal circumstances): feeling fulfillment and being appreciated facilitated involvement. Older age, having a family of their own, a job and complex family relations were barriers to family caregiver involvement. CONCLUSION: To optimize family involvement, it is important to adopt a family-centered approach and provide training and guidance. Making a personal, comprehensive plan with family caregivers and offering them guidance can help them overcome their uncertainty and remove barriers to being more involved with a care program aiming to improve the quality of life of their relative. Also recommended is training for staff to improve communication with family caregivers. The Namaste study is registered with the Netherlands Trial Register (NTR5692).

Symptom relief in patients with pneumonia and dementia: implementation of a practice guideline.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the degree of implementation and barriers encountered in the use of a practice guideline for optimal symptom relief for patients with dementia and pneumonia in Dutch nursing homes. METHODS: A process evaluation included assessment of reach, fidelity, and dose delivered using researcher's observations, and dose received was addressed in a question "use of the practice guideline," which the physicians completed for each patient included in the study. Perceived barriers were assessed with a structured questionnaire (response 69%) and semi-structured interviews (n = 14), which were subject to qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Of the 55 physicians involved in the intervention phase, 87% attended an implementation meeting; 20 physicians joined the study later (reach). The intervention was implemented as planned, and all intervention components were delivered by the researchers (fidelity and dose delivered). Thirty-six physicians included 109 patients. For 81% of the patients, the treating physician stated to have used the guideline (dose received). The guideline was perceived as providing a good overview of current practice, but some physicians had expected a more directive protocol or algorithm. Further, recommended regular observations of symptoms were rarely performed. Physician's often felt that "this is not different from what we usually do," and with the acute illness, there was not always enough time to (re)familiarize with the contents. CONCLUSIONS: The physicians used the practice guideline frequently despite important barriers. Future implementation may involve strategies such as multiple interactive meetings. Further, the greatest potential to alter usual practice should be emphasized, such as using observational instruments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Factors influencing antibiotic prescribing in long-term care facilities: a qualitative in-depth study.

BACKGROUND: Insight into factors that influence antibiotic prescribing is crucial when developing interventions aimed at a more rational use of antibiotics. We examined factors that influence antibiotic prescribing in long-term care facilities, and present a conceptual model that integrates these factors. METHODS: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with physicians (n = 13) and nursing staff (n = 13) in five nursing homes and two residential care homes in the central-west region of the Netherlands. An iterative analysis was applied to interviews with physicians to identify and categorize factors that influence antibiotic prescribing, and to integrate these into a conceptual model. This conceptual model was triangulated with the perspectives of nursing staff. RESULTS: The analysis resulted in the identification of six categories of factors that can influence the antibiotic prescribing decision: the clinical situation, advance care plans, utilization of diagnostic resources, physicians' perceived risks, influence of others, and influence of the environment. Each category comprises several factors that may influence the decision to prescribe or not prescribe antibiotics directly (e.g. pressure of patients' family leading to antibiotic prescribing) or indirectly via influence on other factors (e.g. unfamiliarity with patients resulting in a higher physician perceived risk of non-treatment, in turn resulting in a higher tendency to prescribe antibiotics). CONCLUSIONS: Our interview study shows that several non-rational factors may affect antibiotic prescribing decision making in long-term care facilities, suggesting opportunities to reduce inappropriate antibiotic use. We developed a conceptual model that integrates the identified categories of influencing factors and shows the relationships between those categories. This model may be used as a practical tool in long-term care facilities to identify local factors potentially leading to inappropriate prescribing, and to subsequently intervene at the level of those factors to promote appropriate antibiotic prescribing.