The purpose of the study was to develop a nursing intervention strategy in grooming performance of elders with dementia. A quasi-experimental two-group design using switching replications with removed intervention was employed. Three residents with mild dimentia and three residents with severe "dimentia care unit of a long-term care facility. Three residents among six residents were randomly selected to receive the nursing intervention early. A total of 21 sessions were celeected in the morning using videotape recordings. During the baseline and post-intervention session, each resident was asked to wash hands, brush teeth, wash face and comb hair. The nurse aides were asked to help the task in their customary way. Ten intervention session by the trained intervener consisted of systematic prompting and social reinforment and environmental context. Interobserver agreement for the instrument as observational measurement was measured by the trained observer.
Data were analyzed in two phase. First, the quantitative data were analyzed to determain theindependent functional behaviors of grooming performance of individuals with dementia. Data were examined by individual graphic display throughout the three phase (baseline, nursing intervention, post-intervention). Second, the functional relationships were analyzed to determine antecedents and consequences of resident responses associated with grooming.
Although the number of subjedts in this study were too small to draw a meaningful conclusions during even the short period of nursing intervention, which can be applicable to all elders wita dementia, the result show that the functional behaviors of even severely demented elders can be maintained or improved, indicating the effectiveness of nursing care strategies on the ADL task of grooming. The data in this research suggest that maintaining or improving the functional ability is possible with a nursing intervention, which was a highly structured and systematic approach that involved modifying the environmental and behavioral context, through strategies including prompting and social.
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