Compassionate Touch^® Delivered by Long-term Care Staff for Residents with Dementia: Preliminary Results

Abstract

Limited evidence supports the use of touch or massage for people with dementia. Interventions incorporating a person-centered approach to touch delivered by staff may benefit residents with dementia and staff in long-term care settings. The Compassionate Touch® (CT) program provides protocol-based, skilled human touch and compassionate presence. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore experiences and perspectives of staff who provided the CT intervention to residents with dementia three times per week for three weeks. Five staff and five residents with dementia in memory care settings participated in the study. Staff were individually interviewed after the three-week intervention, and NVivo 11 software was used for thematic analysis. Although the findings of the present study are preliminary, staff who delivered the CT program perceived positive impacts on themselves and residents with dementia. Programs such as CT may benefit staff and residents with dementia by promoting positive social interactions and giving joy within staff-resident dyads, increasing staff self-efficacy in caring for residents with dementia and residents’ responsiveness and calmness, and meeting residents’ needs for human touch and affection. Further rigorous studies are needed to measure effectiveness of the CT program on psychosocial outcomes of residents and care-related outcomes of staff.

Keywords:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• caregivers
• dementia
• personhood
• therapeutic touch

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the support of AGE-u-cate Training Institute for the research process. We also thank all the research participants and the directors of two memory care units in Fort Worth and Plano, TX, for the present study. We appreciate the support of 2016-2017 Chancellor’s Research Fellowship program at Texas Woman’s University. Dr. Kunik’s contribution to this work was supported with resources and the use of facilities at the Houston VA HSR&D Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety (CIN13-413). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. government or Baylor College of Medicine.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The research project of this paper was supported by 2016-2017 Chancellor’s Research Fellowship program at Texas Woman’s University (the grant number: N/A).