Residents’ life stories in nursing homes.xlsx

The aim of the study is to determine the impact of life story on staff members before implementation of care for residents with dementia in nursing homes. We realized a cross-sectional study with an online survey based on two fictive clinical vignettes: one described a resident with typical clinical elements (i.e. basic vignette) while the other contained typical clinical elements and life story information (i.e. enriched vignette). The two vignettes were visually similar and the order in which vignettes were presented (basic vignette then enriched; order 1 - enriched vignette, then basic; order 2) to staff members was counterbalanced (all staff members considered the two vignettes). After reading each vignette, staff members had to answer the following questions using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS; a cursor is placed on a line between two extremes, for example “not at all” and “quite”): (1) <i>Useful information: </i>do you think you have all the useful information you need to adequately support this person? (from "not at all" to "quite"); (2) <i>Confidence: </i>to what extent would you feel confident in caring for this person in the NH where you work? (from "not at all" to "quite"); (3) <i>Empathy: </i>how much empathy do you feel for this person? (from "not at all" to "very much”). The notion of empathy refers to the ability to feel another person’s emotions, feelings and experiences; (4) <i>Notion of sympathy: </i> how do you perceive this person? (from “unsympathetic” to “sympathetic”)<i>; (5) Notion of independence</i>: how do you perceive this person? (from “dependent” to “independent”); and (6) <i>Workload: </i>how would you estimate the workload that this person would need from you? (from “permanent” to “null”). For each question, a score ranging between 0 and 100 was obtained. The closer the score was to 100, the more “positive” it was.