Dressing of cognitively impaired nursing home residents: description and analysis.

Purpose: Getting dressed is an activity that is of particular difficulty for many persons with dementia, given the need for hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and overall planning skills. Despite several studies concerning interventions to improve dressing behavior, very little is known about the dressing process as it is currently performed. The purpose of this study is to characterize the dressing activity of daily living (ADL) of nursing home residents suffering from dementia and thereby identify ways to improve the dressing process.

Nursing staff members' perceptions of pain indicators in persons with severe dementia.

Objectives: The aims of this study were to (1) identify behaviors that occur in noncommunicative nursing home residents that are perceived by nurses to be indicators of pain, (2) determine factors affecting the differentiation of pain behaviors from similar behaviors due to other causes, and (3) assess nurses' perceptions of the prevalence and importance of specific indicators of pain as well as barriers to the detection of pain in this population.

Setting And Patients: Seventy-two staff members of three nursing homes were interviewed and surveyed about specific behaviors associated with pain. Focus groups were conducted with staff to validate pain indicators and investigate perceptions of their own ability to identify pain.