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
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.


CONCLUSIONS
This trial will particularly contribute to the evidence on efficacy of non-pharmacological interventions in dementia care.


BACKGROUND
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00653731.
Berg
Almuth
A
Institute for Health Care and Nursing Studies, Medical Faculty, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. almuth.berg@medizin.uni-halle.de
Sadowski
Katharina
K
Beyrodt
Melanie
M
Hanns
Stephanie
S
Zimmermann
Markus
M
Langer
Gero
G
Becker
Christiane
C
Lautenschläger
Christine
C
Behrens
Johann
J
D000368:Aged; D002985:Clinical Protocols; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003704:Dementia / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D006707:Homes for the Aged; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care / Q000379:methods*; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000379:methods; D009735:Nursing Homes; D013997:Time Factors