Methodologies for Clinical Outcomes of Dementia Gardens

该补助金审查了新的策略，以获得阿尔茨海默病或相关痴呆症患者的客观临床数据，将这些数据与基于信息的数据相匹配（主观措施在痴呆症患者中的可靠性值得怀疑）。它还为研究一种干预措施（增加户外时间）奠定了基础，这种干预措施可以影响痴呆症患者及其护理人员的生活质量。这项R 03补助金的目的是对探索在长期护理环境中居住的痴呆症患者的户外活动时间增加与睡眠，躁动和活动模式之间的关系所需的方法进行试点测试。有很好的证据表明，自然和户外空间对压力大的人有广泛的积极影响，我们的睡眠模式增加了光照，但几乎没有经验证据表明痴呆症患者在户外度过的临床结果。现有的关于户外空间和痴呆症患者的研究要么集中在自主/自由外出的问题上，要么集中在人们在户外度过时间的地方。其他研究人员的项目也有类似的目标（评估痴呆症患者增加户外活动时间的临床结果）。待检查的问题包括：1）鼓励居民在户外度过时间，而不会使活动混淆结果，2）让居民佩戴活动记录技术来测量活动水平和光线暴露，3）确定Actiwatch的活动水平读数是否提供有关压力水平和焦虑的可辨别信息。此外，试点数据将为功效分析提供关于效应量的充分信息，以确定后续R 01资助提案所需的样本量。

This grant examines new strategies to obtain objective, clinical data on persons with Alzheimer's disease or related dementias, matching this data against informant-based data (subjective measures being of questionable reliability in individuals with dementia). It also lays the foundation for studying an intervention (increased time outdoors) that can impact both the quality of life of individuals with dementia and their caregivers. The purpose of this R03 grant is to pilot test the methodologies needed to explore the relationship between spending increased time outdoors and sleep, agitation and activity patterns in individuals with dementia residing in lung-term care settings. There is excellent evidence of a broad range of positive impacts of nature and outdoor space on people who are stressed and our increased light exposure on sleep patterns, but virtually no empirical evidence of clinical outcomes of spending time outdoors for people with dementia. Existing studies on outdoor space and people with dementia either focus on the issue of autonomy/freedom to go outside, or on where people spend time when outdoors. Other researchers' projects with similar goals (to assess clinical outcomes of increased time outdoors for people with dementia. The issues to be examined include 1) encouraging residents to spend time outdoors without the activity confounding the results, 2) getting residents to wear the actigraphy technology to measure exposure to activity level and light and 3) determining whether the activity level readings from the Actiwatch provide discernable information about stress levels and agitation. Additionally, the pilot data will provide sufficient information about effect size for the power analyses to determine sample size needed for the subsequent R01 grant proposal.