How carers use truth and deception in dementia v1.0

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Truth and deception in dementia: a qualitative study of carer decision-making in the home environment

• IRAS ID

  217300

• Contact name

  Melissa R O'Leary

• Contact email

  melissa.o'leary@sssft.nhs.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Staffordshire University

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 10 months, 28 days

• Research summary

  The number of people with dementia in English is increasing, and many people are cared for in the community by carers, that is family or friends, saving the UK economy billions. Therefore, this study seeks to understand carers experiences and to make recommendations to support them, because carers are a crucial resource within the economy and dementia care.

  It is known that carers may use the truth or deception, such as a lie, as a strategy when communicating with people with dementia who appear confused or disorientated (Blum, 1994). This study seeks to explore decision-making processes when carers decide whether to use the truth or deception with people with dementia in their home setting. This study is important because despite how crucial carers are and the level of responsibility they have, little is known about how they make these decisions compared to carers employed within caring roles.

  This study seeks to learn about the experiences of adult carers supporting a person with a moderate to severe presentation of a diagnosed dementia, for example Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia. The study will be conducted through a dementia service within one NHS Trust where the service criteria is that a person has a diagnosed dementia and presents with complex/challenging behaviour assessed using a ‘Care Cluster Tool’.. The study will be advertised to carers attending support groups ran the service and through contact with staff in the team. This study will not involve people with dementia; only carers.

  Carers will volunteer to take part. Taking part means attending one interview on an NHS site and completing brief demographic measures. Recruitment will stop when enough interviews have been completed, and the researcher decides they are not finding any new or different information through the interviews (saturation) in order to satisfy grounded theory methodology.

• REC name

  Wales REC 6

• REC reference

  17/WA/0225

• Date of REC Opinion

  4 Aug 2017

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion