Developing a person-centred care environment aiming to enhance the autonomy of nursing home residents with physical impairments, a descriptive study.

Background: Enhancing autonomy is important within the context of the care environment in nursing homes. A nursing home is a place for older adults with physical impairments, who need assistance, to live and where staff work who help them to exercise autonomy. Previous research shows that older adults and staff are influenced by the care environment to apply autonomy-enhancing activities.

Nurturing Cultural Change in Care for Older People: Seeing the Cherry Tree Blossom.

There is a need for person-centred approaches and empowerment of staff within the residential care for older people; a movement called 'culture change'. There is however no single path for achieving culture change. With the aim of increasing understandings about cultural change processes and the promotion of cultural values and norms associated with person-centred practices, this article presents an action research project set on a unit in the Netherlands providing care for older people with dementia.

Working towards integrated community care for older people: empowering organisational features from a professional perspective.

Although multi-disciplinary cooperation between professionals is a prerequisite to provide integrated care in the community, this seems hard to realise in practice. Yet, little is known about the experiences of professionals who implement it nor about the organisational features professionals identify as empowering during this cooperation process. Therefore, a case study of a multi-disciplinary geriatric team was performed.

Balancing risk prevention and health promotion: towards a harmonizing approach in care for older people in the community.

Many older people in western countries express a desire to live independently and stay in control of their lives for as long as possible in spite of the afflictions that may accompany old age. Consequently, older people require care at home and additional support. In some care situations, tension and ambiguity may arise between professionals and clients whose views on risk prevention or health promotion may differ.

Identifying sources of strength: resilience from the perspective of older people receiving long-term community care.

This study seeks to explore the sources of strength giving rise to resilience among older people. Twenty-nine in-depth interviews were conducted with older people who receive long-term community care. The interviews were subjected to a thematic content analysis.

Nursing assistants' behaviour during morning care: effects of the implementation of snoezelen, integrated in 24-hour dementia care.

Aim: This paper reports an investigation of the effects of the implementation of snoezelen, or multisensory stimulation, on the quality of nursing assistants' behaviour during morning care.

Background: Nursing assistants in long-term dementia care are often unaware of the impact of their behaviour on patient functioning. Snoezelen is a psychosocial intervention that might improve the quality of caregiver behaviour by combining a person-centred approach with the integration of sensory stimuli.