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- Bielsten, Therése, 1978-
(author)
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“Doing things together” : Towards a health promoting approach to couples’ relationships and everyday life in dementia
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Background: Most people with dementia live in their own homes, often together with their partners, who become informal caregivers. Relationship quality and sense of couplehood can be threatened as a result of the transition from a mutually interdependent relationship to a caregiver-care-receiver relationship. This, in turn, may lead to many negative consequences for both partners. Support provided for couples is often divided into different types for the person with dementia and for the partner without dementia and lacks couple-based support that targets the relationship, resources and the couple’s everyday life together. Aim: The overall aim of this thesis is to explore couple-centred interventions in dementia and to develop and test a salutogenic, resource-oriented and couple-based intervention among couples in which one partner has dementia living at home. Methods and findings: This thesis comprises three parts: The first part Exploring involves two linked reviews, one narrative review (study I A) and one scoping review (study I B) that aim to identify and describe what previous couple-centred interventions comprised and why they were conducted. The results of the reviews revealed a knowledge gap in and a need for easily accessible support that targets couple relationships, resources and everyday life. The second part Developing (study II) refers to the development of an easily accessible resource-oriented couple-management intervention. The first step was to identify priority topics for such an intervention through a co-researcher process with couples living with dementia. This included a comprehensive literature review, interviews with couples in which one partner has dementia, and consultation meetings with expert groups of people with dementia and partners in both Sweden and the UK. The co-researcher process and the expert meetings informed four main themes with corresponding sub-themes that couples with dementia considered as important to their wellbeing in their everyday lives: (1) Home and Neighbourhood, (2) Meaningful Activities and Relationships, (3) Approach and Empowerment, and (4) Couplehood. The themes were further developed and integrated into the multimedia application DemPower, which was developed for the delivery of the intervention. The third part Testing and Evaluating describes a feasibility study (study III) in which the DemPower application was tested for feasibility and acceptability among couples in Sweden and the UK. The results of the feasibility study indicated that the DemPower intervention was feasible and acceptable among couples in which one partner has dementia living at home. The testing and evaluating part also comprise a qualitative study (study IV) that explores the experiences of engaging with DemPower together as a couple living with dementia in Sweden. The findings resulted in the three themes: (1) Growth of the relationship, (2) We are not alone, and (3) Positive approach, which the couples appreciated and associated with the resource-oriented and salutogenic approach of DemPower. The overall findings of the thesis are presented in a concluding synthesis at the end of the thesis. The concluding synthesis, focused on “Meaningfulness”, “Empowering health promotion”, “Normalization” and “Transitions and couplehood”, represents the core findings of this thesis. What this thesis adds: This thesis contributes to research, healthcare and the public by highlighting the need for a salutogenic approach toward couples living with dementia. The DemPower application, with its focus on couples’ relationships, resource-orientation and everyday life, has proven feasibility and acceptability and has meaningfully addressed a gap in the literature and in practice. As researchers, healthcare professionals and the public, we need to support couples where one partner has dementia to continue to live as normal life as possible. This can best be achieved by focusing on what couples can do, by inclusion and by valuing them as the experts within dementia research and of their life experiences.
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| 2. |
- Larsson, Susanne
(author)
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Självbestämmande i LSS : En villkorad rättighet för personer med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Persons with moderate to more severe intellectual disabilities have a legal right to exercise self-determination, and a right to receive individually tailored support to enable them to live independently. However, these rights are not always realised in practice. Taking the difficulties that the functional impairments imply as a starting point, the aim of this thesis is to critically review and accrue increased knowledge about what conditions for self-determination persons with moderate to more severe intellectual disabilities are given within the context of support services offered, according to the Swedish Disability Act. The study is a multiple case study, based on analyses of so-called implementation plans and notes from observations and interviews (with staff), all gathered within the same six units:three group homes and three daily activity units. By conducting thematic analyses and using concepts from Nordenfeldt’s action theory, as well as theory about positioning, three overarching themes were developed: staff’s supportive methods and approaches, staff’s non-supportive methods and approaches, and staff’s methods and approaches that are both supportive and not when it comes to opportunities for self-determination. For example, staff views on the persons’self-determination as being adequate are interpreted as supportive. As a contrast, the fact that enhanced support is rarely used and, if used, rarely to a degree that promotes the person’s own initiative, is interpreted as non-supportive, and the implementation plans are interpreted as both supportive and non-supportive. Fundamentally, the study shows that the practical possibilities to exercise self determinationare limited for persons with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities by certain aspects of staff methods and approaches, and by the organisation of the units where the support is conducted. Further research is suggested on how to enable practise, staff methods and approaches that, to a higher degree, consider the persons themselves when planning and conducting their support, on the organisational preconditions, the implementation plans included, for complying with the principles and political goals of a person’s self determination and on the impact of staff knowledge, not least when it comes to enhanced support and communication devices. Finally, the character of conducting support and what this means for the methods and approaches, should be investigated further.
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| 3. |
- Odzakovic, Elzana, 1986-
(author)
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Neighbourhood nursing : connection, place and meaning in the everyday experience of dementia
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Background: Recent policy is marked by a shift towards enabling people with dementia to remain at home and in their neighbourhoods, yet little is known about the wider perspective of neighbourhood as an everyday place of connection, practice and meaning in the lives of people with experience of dementia. Aims: The aim of this thesis is twofold. The first aim is to explore the neighbourhood as an everyday place for people with experiences of dementia. The second aim is to explore neighbourhood as a place for practice. Methods and Designs: Five studies are included in the thesis with both quantitative and qualitative designs. Study I had a cross-sectional exploratory and descriptive design. A total cohort of 17, 405 people with a dementia diagnosis were identified and matched with data about home care services and housing, and were then associated with socio-demographic factors in three county councils: Östergötland, Stockholm and Västerbotten. Study II had a phenomenological design; 14 community-dwelling people diagnosed with dementia in the County of Östergötland participated using walking interviews. Study III had an inductive and exploratory qualitative design including 14 community-dwelling people living alone with dementia in England, Scotland and Sweden involving multiple data collection methods. Study IV had an inductive and explorative qualitative design that included 22 people with the lived, personal and professional experiences of dementia and used semi-structured individual and group interviews. Study V had an inductive and explorative qualitative design where the perspectives of 18 participants (registered and specialist nurses) were included using shadowing as the main method for data collection. Findings: In study I, 72% of the cohort was living in ordinary housing and 28% in special housing of the total of 17, 405 people with a dementia diagnosis. Overall, 52% of 17, 405 people with dementia in three county councils (Östergötland, Stockholm and Västerbotten) were living alone. Study II revealed that walking in the neighbourhood was an integral part of their day-to-day activities that helped them to manage life with dementia. Connection to nature by being outdoors was a restorative practice for people living with dementia. Neighbourhood was often described as a social context, although some participants living alone revealed that their social contacts were mainly staff working in municipal home care. In study III, participants across all three field sites channelled their efforts to stay connected to the neighbourhood into creating new ways of maintaining social networks and relationships. By participating in several activities (provided in the United Kingdom by the third-sector and charitable groups, and in Sweden, by the municipalities), bonds of friendship were created. However, the impact of stigma surrounding dementia was highlighted by the participants, which caused experiences of involuntary solitude or loneliness. Despite the impact of stigma, participants took control over their lives by searching for new daily social connections in the neighbourhood and were by no means passive in the face of the challenges in everyday life. In study IV, the participants discussed how dementia was stigmatized in the community. People living with dementia were often not being respected as active citizens with their own resources in the community. Being socially active in a group or in public spaces were strategies to maintain a social role in the community. Participants with different experiences of dementia wanted the day care centres and teams to be more centrally involved in person-centred care and health-promoting improvements. Finally, in study V, participants struggled with the commonly held view of their role and their workplace within the health care system, interpreting it as being invisible, as if placed in a black box. The tasks and responsibilities of the participants were shifting to assistant nurses, neighbours and family members according to the socio-economic level of the municipality. Nonetheless, the participants were clearly part of the neighbourhood. The findings of this thesis have been integrated into a combined thematic analysis based on the five studies to reach an overall representation of people’s experiences of neighbourhood as an everyday place and a place for practice in the context of dementia. Five main themes (and three sub-themes) emerged from the analysis: (1) walkable attachment to the lived neighbourhood; (2) daily activities promote health and well-being; (3) opportunities for social connections; (4) just treat us as active citizens; (5) neighbourhood: a place for practice. The analysis suggested the neighbourhood was not only described as a walkable, social and citizenship arena in the context of dementia; it was also a place where practice was ongoing around the clock (studies II, III, IV and V) because most of the people with dementia are living in ordinary housing (study I). Conclusion: The thesis presents a new foundation and knowledge to understand neighbourhood as a place for everyday life and practice by applying a new lens for understanding. The neighbourhood can be understood as a place linked by connections that people actively searched out, and where the meaning of place emerges via movement of the body through the world. It is also a site where practices support everyday life for people with dementia, especially for those living alone with dementia. This points to the need to re-think nursing practice, where “neighbourhood nursing” as a formal model with a lifeworld perspective has to be established in dialogue with citizens.
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