Does it Matter if We Disagree? The Impact of Incongruent Care Preferences on Persons with Dementia and Their Care Partners.

Purpose: To gain a better understanding of how actual and perceived incongruence of care preferences affects the psychosocial well-being of persons with dementia and their family caregiver.

Design And Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with 128 dyads each consisting of a person with dementia and a family caregiver. Baseline data from an intervention study were used to examine the relationship between the caregiver's care-related preferences, the person with dementia's care-related preferences, and the caregiver's perception of the person with dementia's preferences.

The SHARE program for dementia: Implementation of an early-stage dyadic care-planning intervention.

This article describes the implementation of SHARE (Support, Health, Activities, Resources, and Education), a counseling-based care-planning intervention for persons living with early-stage dementia and their family caregivers (CGs). The foundation of SHARE is built upon assessing and documenting the person living with dementia's care values and preferences for future care. Using the SHARE approach, CGs are given an opportunity to achieve an understanding of their loved one's desires before the onset of disease progression when the demand for making care decisions is high.

Recruitment challenges and strategies: Lessons learned from an early-stage dyadic intervention (innovative practice).

An increasing number of family caregivers are seeking services and support due in large part to the dramatic increase in the number of older adults obtaining dementia diagnoses. This paper describes barriers and challenges experienced by our research team in recruiting early-stage dementia caregiving dyads into research studies. Effective recruitment and screening strategies to address these barriers are also discussed.