Background: Family and professional caregivers of individuals with dementia often witness care-receiver's lucidity events.
Objective: A qualitative data analysis was performed of documented family and professional caregivers' experiences and their respective appraisals of lucidity events.
Research Design And Methods: Using a reduction method of selection, data from 10 in-home family caregivers and 20 professional caregivers to long-term care residents was content-coded and analysed.
Objectives: Unexpected lucidity is a phenomenon of scientific, clinical, and psychological relevance to health professionals, to those who experience it, and their relatives. This paper describes qualitative methods used to develop an informant-based measure of lucidity episodes.
Methods: The approach was refinement of the operationalization of the construct; review of seminal items, modification, and purification; and confirmation of the feasibility of reporting methodology.
Although clinicians caring for persons at the end of life recognize the phenomenon of paradoxical/terminal lucidity, systematic evidence is scant. The current pilot study aimed to develop a structured interview instrument for health care professionals to report lucidity. A questionnaire measuring lucidity length, degree, content, coinciding circumstances, and time from episode to death was expanded to include time of day, expressive and receptive communication, and speech during the month prior to and during the event.
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