Agitation and quality of life in care homes version 1

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  A naturalistic 16 month cohort study of agitation and quality of life in care homes

• IRAS ID

  143438

• Contact name

  Claudia Cooper

• Contact email

  c.cooper@ucl.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  UCL

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 11 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Half of people with dementia experience symptoms of agitation every month. Symptoms of agitation include restlessness, pacing, shouting and verbal or physical aggression. Many people with agitation are admitted to care homes as families find they cannot care for them at home. Within the care home, agitated behaviour takes up staff time and emotional and physical energy but they do not always know how to respond. The study in this application is one of the streams in an integrated programme to help tackle agitation in a variety of settings from domestic environments to end of life.
  We will recruit 50 care homes (residential or nursing homes), including those with links to Camden and Islington NHS trust who will be initially approached by trust clinicians as the residents are trust patients. We will identify all residents with dementia, and the care home manager will approach them and their family carers. After obtaining informed consent, or advice from personal or nominated consultees for those lacking capacity, we will ask people with dementia who can answer questions about their quality of life using a questionnaire specially designed for this group. We will also ask staff and their family carers for those who have them, to rate the quality of life of the person with dementia. We will ask care home staff other questions about residents with dementia, including about agitation and the care they receive. Staff will also answer questions about the ways they cope with caring stresses. We will ask these questions 5 times over 16 months. We will use our results to test our theory that agitation affects quality of life, and that the ways staff cope with stress affect the impact agitation has on quality of life.

• REC name

  London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  14/LO/0034

• Date of REC Opinion

  6 Mar 2014

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion