Better Dining Atmosphere May Help Dementia Patients
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Giving nursing home patients with dementia a more homelike dining room may help them gain weight, and improve their mental functioning.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Giving nursing home patients with dementia a more homelike dining room may help them gain weight, and improve their mental functioning in the process, researchers in Sweden have found.
The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing, suggest that nursing homes can take simple measures to improve the health of patients with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.
The dining room makeover initiated by the study team included new tablecloths, pictures on the walls and serving bowls on the tables, rather than prepared trays, so patients could serve themselves. Along with those changes, personal items were placed in residents' rooms, name plates were put on their doors and nursing home staff started wearing brightly colored clothes.
This "calmer, homelike" environment encouraged patients to be more independent at mealtime, and to interact more with each other and the staff, according to Dr. Mona Kihlgren, the study's senior author and a professor at Orebro University Hospital in Sweden.
All of this, she told Reuters Health, may have made mealtime more "understandable" for the dementia patients, helping them to eat more. Their mental functioning improved, in turn, because they were doing more for themselves and speaking more with the nursing home staff.
The study was conducted at two nursing homes, each of which trained staff in one ward to make the mealtime changes. Over three months, 15 of 18 patients in the revamped wards gained weight, compared with 2 of 15 patients in wards that continued with standard care.
Eating difficulties and weight loss are common problems among people with more advanced Alzheimer's or other types of dementia. The new findings point to the importance of the dining atmosphere in whether patients are willing and able to eat, according to the researchers.
The potential benefits of such changes "should receive serious attention," Kihlgren said.
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Nursing, May 2007.
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