Experience of Dementia Patients in Communicating with Nurses: A Literature Review

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature review
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1LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction:
Older people living with dementia experience several challenges in their life and not
getting appropriate care or support in nursing homes often lead them to social isolation and
withdrawal (Joling et al. 2017, pp. 509-517). Nurses are the main staffs who provide care to
dementia patients. However, gap in communication between health care workers and the people
living with dementia is one issue that makes living in nursing homes as a burdensome task for
such patients. Dooley, Bailey and McCabe (2015, pp.1277-1300) reports that dementia patients
spend very little time in direct interaction with other and this increases the likelihood of not
meeting psychosocial needs of client. To understand their experience in detail, the main purpose
of the report conducts a review of literature to understand the experience of dementia patient in
communicating with nurses and to understand the level of communication skills needed by
nurses to provide social and intellectual stimulation to people living with dementia.
Literature review:
Comparison of methodologies:
The study by Söderlund et al. (2016, pp.37-47) gave an insight into the experience of
dementia patients living in nursing homes by comparing the action and reactions of dementia
people after one-to-one communication with nurses. The researcher used naturalistic design with
the use of videotapes to capture reactions of people living with dementia and a descriptive
approach was used to explain the participant’s experience of communication with nurses. The
advantage of using video taped conversation to evaluate experience was that it could give brief
idea about first impressions formed and also evaluate patient’s satisfaction with communication
process by observing non-verbal cues like eye contact, gestures, orientation and body posture.

2LITERATURE REVIEW
However, one disadvantage of using this approach is that raises concerns related to the
confidentiality of research participants and the overall cost for this type of research is high (Asan
and Montague 2014, p.161).
In contrast, Walker and Paliadelis (2016, pp. E6-E10) used phenomenological approach
to explore lived experiences of older persons in the setting. Phenomenological approach is used
in qualitative studies to explore the experience related to a phenomenon from a participant’s
perspective. (Smith 2015). Using this approach to explore lived experience can help to improve
services to a large extent. Another research literature use qualitative content analysis approach to
explore experience of nursing staff related to caring for people with dementia (Söderman and
Rosendahl 2016, pp.311-326). Use of qualitative approach favoured getting in-depth data
regarding personal experiences of nursing staff.
Analysis of research findings:
Few actions and more reactions by patients during interaction with nurse
Söderlund et al. (2016, pp.37-47) used video tapes conversation to collect response from
participants and the review of findings indicates several factors that limit effective
communication process. Nurses failed to get appropriate response from participants because
participants were uninterested to answer questions and they talked about more than one topic at a
time. However, one positive and unique findings was that nurses were attentive and participants
gave appropriate response when they were trying to talk about what was in their mind. They
seemed to be more comfortable with this type of conversation. The study also revealed the
important of gestures like eye contact and touching to enable patients to speak freely. This