Hamers, Jan P. H.

Background: Partnerships between family and nursing staff in nursing homes are essential to address residents' needs and wishes. Collaboration is needed to create partnerships; nonetheless, challenges exist. Aim: This study aimed to gain insights into the experiences of families collaborating with staff. Method: Semi-structured interviews were held with 30 family caregivers of nursing home residents with dementia.

Objectives: To prevent and control COVID-19 infections, nursing homes across the world have taken very restrictive measures, including a ban for visitors. These restrictive measures have an enormous impact on residents' well-being and pose dilemmas for staff, although primary data are lacking. A Dutch guideline was developed to cautiously open nursing homes for visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Having a match between a nursing home and the preferences of people with dementia is beneficial for their well-being. It is suggested that innovative types of nursing homes such as small-scale living facilities and green care farms create a better match between their care environment and their residents. However whether this is also reflected into the experiences of informal caregivers is not known. Therefore, this study explores what their positive and negative experiences are with regard to green care farms, other small-scale living facilities, and traditional nursing homes.

Although the majority of people with dementia wish to age in place, they are particularly susceptible to nursing home admission. Nurses can play an important role in detecting practical problems people with dementia and their informal caregivers are facing and in advising them on various ways to manage these problems at home. Six focus group interviews (n = 43) with formal and informal caregivers and experts in the field of assistive technology were conducted to gain insight into the most important practical problems preventing people with dementia from living at home.