1,721,049 research outputs found
The efficacy of Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) for people with mild-to-moderate dementia: A review
No full textCognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) is an internationally used, evidence-based psychosocial intervention for people with mild-to-moderate dementia. The present review thus aimed specifically to examine the reliability of the findings and the strength of the evidence obtained in studies on the CST protocol concerning any benefit in terms of cognitive functioning, perceived quality of life, psychological, behavioral, and everyday life functioning of people with dementia, and their family caregivers’ health status, quality of life, and burden of care. A systematic literature search on studies specifically adopting the CST protocol in patients with mild-to-moderate DSM-IV dementia – eventually involving their family members – was performed. A total of 238 papers were screened and 12 finally included in the qualitative analysis after inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied. The Jadad Scale and the Stroke Prevention and Educational Awareness Diffusion (SPREAD) method were used to appraise the studies’ methodological quality. Moderate levels of evidence emerged for general cognitive functioning, language comprehension and production, and quality of life. The levels of evidence were weaker for short-term memory, orientation, praxis, depression, social and emotional loneliness, behavior, and communication in people with dementia, and for their caregivers’ health status and anxiety symptoms. Albeit with the limited quality of reviewed evidence, and the need for more studies on CST, the present review highlights the value of this program as part of dementia care services to sustain the cognitive functioning and quality of life of people with dementia
Staff factors associated with perception of behaviour as 'challenging' in residential and nursing homes
No full textOpening paragraph:The extensive literature on stress and caregiving in dementia focused, until the mid-1990s, on the experiences of family carers. Since then, studies in North America have suggested that the factors that contribute to stress and burnout in staff working in residential and day care settings include the shift (Novak & Chappell, 1996), working conditions (Wilber & Specht, 1994), social support (Chappell & Novak, 1992), staff appraisal (Novak & Chappell, 1994) and uncooperative or difficult behaviour (Chappell & Novak, 1994). In the UK, staff stress and/or burnout have been linked with resident aggression (MacPherson et al., 1994), organisational aspects of the work setting (Baillon et al., 1996) and the quality of staff interactions with the residents that they care for (Jenkins & Allen, 1998). The contribution of difficult, uncooperative or aggressive resident behaviour to staff distress parallels the family caregiving literature, where some studies argue strongly that behaviour disturbance or ‘non-cognitive features’, which we refer to as ‘challenging behaviour’, predict carer stress (see, for example, Donaldson et al., 1998). However, the relationship between resident behaviour and staff distress is complex, since the majority of difficult and uncooperative behaviour is predictable, not necessarily intrinsic to the resident, appears to occur during a self-care activity such as dressing or bathing (Beck et al., 1990; Burgener et al., 1992) and can be minimised if the caregiver remains relaxed and smiling (Burgener et al., 1992). Of perhaps more interest is the observation that problematic behaviour in a given resident is often perceived differently by different staff and its impact on different staff can also differ widely (Everitt et al., 1991). The emerging opinion is that the training of care staff is important (Baillon et al., 1996) and should be aimed at helping them work with residents (Chappell & Novak, 1994) or at altering their appraisal of the residents’ behaviour (Novak & Chappell, 1994)
Implementing Cognitive Stimulation Therapy for Dementia: Insights from Understudied Settings and Virtual Delivery Models
No full textBackground: Cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) is an evidence-based group intervention for people living with dementia that has been shown to improve cognitive function and quality of life. Despite its proven clinical and cost-effectiveness, CST implementation remains limited in specific settings, including care homes and low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Recent developments in the online delivery of CST have been driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has also been less widely studied.
Main aims: This thesis explored CST implementation in underrepresented contexts, including care homes, LMIC healthcare facilities, and virtual platforms. Specific objectives included identifying barriers and facilitators of CST implementation, testing the feasibility and acceptability of virtual delivery, and developing scalable models for broader adoption.
Methods: The research used a qualitative approach guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), with some integration of quantitative methods. Studies included a systematic review of psychosocial interventions in care homes, a survey of UK NHS memory clinics on their use of virtual CST during COVID-19, feasibility studies of virtual CST in Brazil and India, and an implementation case study in a Tanzanian hospital.
Results: The systematic review highlighted key barriers, including staffing challenges, training deficits, resource constraints, and facilitators, such as adaptability and external support. Virtual CST emerged as feasible and acceptable in UK memory clinics but faced digital literacy and equity issues. Feasibility studies of virtual CST in Brazil and India showed high acceptability among stakeholders, while the Tanzanian case study of CST implementation identified local adaptation needs and highlighted the importance of community engagement and capacity building.
Conclusion: This thesis provides actionable insights into CST delivery and implementation across diverse settings and shares learnings about improving intervention and implementation research. The findings underscore the importance of adaptability, training, and stakeholder engagement for successful CST delivery
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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