Effects of a communication intervention on the discourse of nursing home residents with dementia and their nursing assistants

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of a communication intervention on discourse characteristics of nursing home residents with dementia and the nursing assistants assigned to care for them. Nursing assistants participated in an intervention program that included the use of effective communication techniques and memory books that they could use when talking to nursing home residents. A control group of nursing assistants and residents with dementia participated without being exposed to the intervention program. Pre- and post-treatment conversations between residents and nursing assistants (66 pre- and 66 post-training; 33 in the treatment group and 33 in the control group) were analyzed with a discourse analysis schema. The results revealed improvements in a variety of resident and nursing assistant discourse characteristics as a result of the intervention. Specifically, post-treatment conversations in the treatment group demonstrated higher coherence and a lower occurrence of empty phrases compared to the control group. Post-treatment conversations in the treatment group also showed a higher occurrence of facilitative discourse strategies by the nursing assistants, such as encouragement and cues, compared to the control group.