Use of dementia care mapping in the care for older people with intellectual disabilities: A mixed-method study.
Feija D Schaap, Geke J Dijkstra, Sijmen A Reijneveld and 1 others
PMID 32812319WHAT IT FOUND
Staff valued Dementia Care Mapping for revealing blind spots in their own behaviour and improving team coordination, but found it difficult to maintain the resulting action plans in daily practice.
Key findings
01Staff reported that DCM increased their awareness of their own professional behaviour and blind spots, helping them move from task-driven care to person-centred care.
02While staff found DCM a valuable addition to daily care, they reported significant difficulty in maintaining the action plans generated by the method.
03The method helped improve team coordination and the feeling of being a team, although this varied depending on the quality of feedback provided by the mapper.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study relied entirely on self-reported data from professionals, which may be biased by social desirability. The questionnaire used was self-developed and not validated. The newly trained mappers were not always fully experienced in providing feedback, which may have affected the quality of the intervention. The study did not measure outcomes for the clients themselves, such as quality of life or behaviour change.
Declared interests
The Medical Ethical Committee of the University Medical Center Groningen approved the study. No specific funding sources or commercial conflicts of interest are detailed in the provided text, though the study was part of a larger quasi-experimental project.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the staff's positive experience with DCM as evidence that the method improves client outcomes or quality of life. The study only measured staff perceptions and found no effect on job satisfaction, while previous research cited in the paper found no evidence for improved client quality of life.