A Feasibility Study of a Community-Based Program for Individuals Living With Dementia.
Patricia Belchior, Mélanie Levasseur, Meena Ramachandran and 3 others
Three men with early dementia found an 8-week occupation-based group program acceptable, attended every session, and kept meeting a year later.
It is a feasibility signal, not proof the program improves outcomes.
Key findings
1Participants found the program acceptable, said they would have liked it to continue longer, and reported it filled a gap in available services for people with dementia and their partners.
2All participants attended every session, with one couple joining a single session via Zoom because of a vacation.
3Participants struggled with the outcome questionnaires, finding it hard to identify priority areas and experiencing fatigue during completion.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Three participants, all white men aged 63 to 79, all university-educated and retired. The findings may not apply to women, other age groups, or people without a university education. Single site in Montreal, delivered in English. The authors note the program will need translation into French for broader Quebec use. Home visits, part of the original program design, were not conducted because the facilitator was unavailable. No demographic data were collected on the partners, so their characteristics and how they shaped the experience are unknown. The recruitment pool was small and dependent on one service manager's referrals, which limits generalisability of the recruitment findings.
Declared interests
Funded by the Canadian Occupational Therapy Foundation and the CIUSSS Centre-Sud-de-l'Île-de-Montréal research programme. No industry sponsor, no author declared a competing interest, and no funder is described as having designed the study or written the manuscript.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the positive participant feedback as evidence the program improves cognitive function, quality of life, or reduces burden. This was a feasibility study of three men, and the outcome measures were not the primary focus. The study tested whether the program could be delivered and whether people would engage with it, not whether it produces clinical change.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →