Effects of Dementia Care Mapping on well-being and quality of life of older people with intellectual disability: A quasi-experimental study.
Feija D Schaap, Geke J Dijkstra, Roy E Stewart and 2 others
PMID 30868692WHAT IT FOUND
Dementia Care Mapping did not improve quality of life in older people with intellectual disability compared with usual care.
The main staff-reported score did not change more in DCM homes than usual care homes at 7 or 14 months.
Key findings
01DCM did not improve the primary quality-of-life score compared with care-as-usual at either follow-up.
02Secondary measures of client behaviour, self-management, staff knowledge and care adaptations also showed no differences.
03The study had low post hoc power for detecting small effects.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The homes were not randomly assigned; allocation depended partly on distance and geographic separation, and the DCM group had more severe disability, more dementia and lower health status at baseline. Outcomes came from staff proxy reports; relatives were omitted because they said they could not assess clients day to day. Post hoc power was low, so small effects could have been missed. Baseline scores were already high, so there may have been little room to show further improvement. DCM was delivered as a package of training, briefing, observation, feedback and action planning, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that DCM cannot help older people with intellectual disability. The study was not randomised, had low post hoc power for small effects, and relied on staff proxy reports, so it cannot rule out smaller or different effects.