Introducing a nursing guideline on depression in dementia: A multiple case study on influencing factors

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Abstract

Background

Successfully introducing care innovations depends on the type of care setting, the intervention and specific circumstances. In this study the factors influencing the introduction of an evidence based nursing guideline on depression in psychogeriatric nursing home residents were studied.

Methods

A mixed methods multiple case study design was used. The cases consisted of nine psychogeriatric wards participating in the intervention group of a controlled clinical trial. Eight types of data source (qualitative and quantitative) were used in the analyses. Triangulation of researchers, data and methods took place. Factors were categorized according to their organizational level: nursing home management (level 1), nursing team (level 2), CNAs (level 3), and residents (level 4).

Results

Factors influencing guideline introduction were mainly found at the levels of the nursing home management and the nursing team. Most factors concern stability of the organization and team (e.g. the inhibiting effects of reorganizations and other innovations), motivation (e.g. the facilitating presence of an opinion leader) and compatibility with current practice and vision (e.g. a facilitating emotion-oriented care vision). Factors influencing a successful application of the guideline are mainly found at CNA and resident level. At CNA level most factors relate to an emotion-oriented care vision (e.g. having a warm and creative personality). At resident level inhibiting factors mainly concern the residents’ health status (e.g. feeling sick and/or having much pain). Important facilitating factors are positive attitudes of relatives and observing a reduction of depression severity.

Conclusions

Special facilitating factors for the guideline introduction and application seem to be the presence of a local opinion leader and the positive attitudes of relatives. Together they can motivate a nursing team in using the guideline. After a successful introduction of the guideline it's important to focus on its consolidation in daily practice.

Section snippets

What is already known about the topic?

  • Introducing new guidelines or other care innovations into practice is no guarantee for success. Successful introduction seems to be most difficult in chronic care.

  • Obstacles to use guidelines often arise at different levels of the health care system: at the level of the patients, the individual professional, the health-care team, the health-care organization or the wider environment.

What this paper adds

  • Factors influencing a successful introduction of the nursing guideline ‘Depression in Dementia’ are mainly found at the first two levels of the nursing home: nursing home management-level and nursing team-level. Factors influencing a successful application of the guideline are mainly found on the last two levels: CNA-level and resident-level.

  • Next to the well known factors ‘stability of the organization’, and ‘compatibility of the guideline with current practice and vision’, other important

Intervention

The guideline was based on the principles of the BehaviorTherapy-PleasantEvents method as developed by Teri et al. (1997), which was shown to be effective in reducing depression in people with dementia still living in the community. Key elements of the newly developed guideline are (1) inducing individualized pleasant events, and (2) reducing unpleasant events. The guideline was developed according to the internationally validated AGREE criteria (AGREE Collaboration, 2003).

The strategies to

Success of the guideline introduction

Table 1 provides the scores of the nine nursing home wards on the variable ‘success of the guideline introduction’.The last column in Table 1 shows the division of the nine wards into three groups:

  • (1)

    successful wards (nos. 1–3);

  • (2)

    moderately successful wards (nos. 4–7);

  • (3)

    unsuccessful wards (nos. 8 and 9).

Box 3 describes the guideline introduction on two of the successful wards (nos. 1 and 3) and Box 4 the introduction at the two unsuccessful wards (nos. 8 and 9).

Factors that relate to a successful guideline introduction and application

Factors that play a role in the

Inhibiting and facilitating factors

In this paper factors influencing a successful introduction and actual use of the nursing guideline ‘Depression in Dementia’ were studied. The guideline introduction proved to be successful on three of the nine participating experimental wards, moderately successful on four of these wards and not-successful on two wards. Factors influencing the guideline introduction and application were categorized on four levels: nursing home management (level 1), nursing team (level 2), individual CNAs

Conclusions

By pursuing a multiple case study design it is possible to show which factors facilitate or inhibit a successful introduction and application of the nursing guideline ‘Depression in Dementia’ on psychogeriatric nursing home wards. Factors influencing a successful introduction are mainly found at the first two levels of the nursing home: nursing home management (level 1) and nursing team (level 2). Factors influencing a successful application of the guideline are mainly found on the last two

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