Page 38 - Delaware Medical Journal - March/April 2021
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All LTCFs where people with dementia and BPSD reside should have staff training and consultative services to facilitate optimal care for people with BPSD.16 Although responses to the questions about consultation and staff training were limited, the large majority of facilities that did respond to these questions indicated the availability of consultation and staff training. These of the 38 facilities that participated did not answer these questions. The facilities that did not answer may have been reluctant
to do so if staff training and behavioral consultations were not available.
This work has several limitations. Many LTCFs did not respond to our survey,
and some that did respond provided only partial information. The small sample size limits the generalizability of our results. In addition, the small sample size weakens the statistical power to detect meaningful differences example, to compare data from nursing homes with data from assisted living facilities, though the less frequent reporting of antipsychotic use from
the responding nursing homes, which are more closely monitored and more tightly regulated than the assisted living facilities, suggests that the regulation
of antipsychotic medication prescribing may be affecting usage patterns.
A strength of this study is that it demonstrates the feasibility of conducting
research by distributing questionnaires
to a state’s entire network of LTCFs, increasing the generalizability and
believe the low rate of responders was
a consequence of our questionnaire’s length and complexity. It is likely that busy, voluntary respondents need either more incentive or shorter questionnaires in order for us to boost the return rates for completed surveys.
BPSD remain a widespread, troubling and resource-consuming concern in the majority of Delaware’s LTCFs. The likelihood of under-reporting
of symptoms may indicate that our estimation of the magnitude of this problem is lower than reality. More
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Del Med J | March/April 2021 | Vol. 93 | No. 2
