Abstract
Background: The notion of person-centered care has been important in investigating relationships between people with dementia and paid carers, and measures are available to assess this. It has been suggested that person-centered care may be a useful construct to apply to understand family-care relationships. However, no measures of person-centered care in this context exist. The study aimed to develop an observational measure of person-centered care for this purpose.
Method: First, a coding system incorporating a range of behaviors that could be considered person-centered or non-person-centered was constructed. Examples included a code relating to whether the person with dementia was involved in planning a task, and a code relating to how the spouse responded to confusion/distress. Second, 11 couples, where one partner had a dementia, were recruited and videotaped cooperating on an everyday task. The system was applied to the care-giving spouse's behaviors, labeling examples of behavior as person-centered or non-person-centered. The final step involved assessing the inter-rater reliability of the system.
Results: The system captured nine categories of behavior, which were each divided into person-centered and non-person-centered types. The system had good reliability (Cohen's κ coefficients were: 0.65 for category and whether behaviors needed to be placed in a category; 0.81 for category excluding the decision about whether behaviors needed to be placed in a category; and 0.79 in relation to whether behaviors were person-centered or non-person-centered.)
Conclusions: Although the small sample size limits the implications of the results, the system is a promising quantitative measure of spousal person-centered care.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1885-1895 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | International Psychogeriatrics |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 11 |
Early online date | 15 Jul 2014 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2014 |
Keywords
- Coding system
- Dementia
- Observation
- Person-centered care
- Spouses
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geriatrics and Gerontology
- Psychiatry and Mental health
- Gerontology
- Clinical Psychology