Long-term Care

AIMS: The aim of this study was to examine the association of specific personal and environmental factors with eating performance among long-term care residents with moderate-to-severe cognitive impairment.

BACKGROUND: Eating is the one of the most basic and easiest activities of daily living to perform. While multilevel factors can be associated with eating performance, the evidence among those with dementia was insufficient.

Background and Purpose: This study examines the underlying factor structure of the Self-Efficacy for Functional Abilities (SEFA) scale among older adults in long-term care settings. Methods: A secondary analysis of SEFA data for 568 residents in 16 long-term care facilities was applied. The sample was randomly split into 2 subsamples. A 2-level exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis adjusting for clustering effect of facilities was used to identify and determine the factor structures respectively. Results: There were 1- and 2-factor models that were identified.

BACKGROUND: Review of research to date has been focusing on maintaining weight and nutrition with little attention on optimizing eating performance.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on eating performance for older adults with dementia in long-term care (LTC).

 Anemia is often an unrecognized and/or undertreated diagnosis in older adults. Failure to diagnose anemia leads to delayed treatment and thus delayed relief of symptoms.

More than half of individuals diagnosed with dementia experience significant functional limitations. A restorative philosophy of care focuses on the restoration and/or maintenance of physical function and helps older adults to compensate for functional impairments so the the highest level of function is obtained and complications of physical dependance are minimized.