Article of the month – May 2020

The website committee selected the following paper for the Interdem paper of the month by two German Interdem colleagues :

“Halek M, Reuther S, Müller-Widmer R, Trutschel D, Holle D.” Dealing with the behaviour of residents with dementia that challenges: A stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial of two types of dementia-specific case conferences in nursing homes (FallDem). Int J Nurs Stud. 2020;104:103435. doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.103435

This study describes the effects of two dementia-specific case conferencing models on the prevalence of behavior that challenges others. This is important as understanding the behaviour of people with dementia and its underlying causes is necessary to enable the use of purposive nursing interventions. The paper finds that Comprehensive analysis of residents´ behaviour within case conferences does not reduce the prevalence of residents showing behavioural changes. Exploratory analysis shows trends that case conferences may reduce the prevalence of single behaviours such as apathy, delusion, hallucination, disinhibition, and eating and nighttime behaviour and have the potential to reduce the work-related burden of staff in nursing homes.