UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Anju Paudel, an assistant professor in the Penn State Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing and researchers in the Tressa Nese and Helen Diskevich Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, and team were recently awarded a two-year, $250,000 grant from the Alzheimer's Association’s Advancing Research on Care and Outcome Measurement (ARCOM) program.

The grant will aid in the development of a study, titled “Development and testing of QUALity of Interactions Inventory (F).” Paudel and team — including Marie Boltz and Terrence Murphy, both of whom are at Penn State, and Elizabeth Galik, at the University of Maryland — plan to develop and validate a comprehensive practical tool that can be used for both guiding and measuring interactions between staff and residents, such as simple gestures like smiles; individual conversations; or intimate personal care for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) care in assisted living settings.

The researchers are planning for the QUALII tool to analyze care interactions with individuals living with ADRD in assisted living settings through evidence-based strategic approaches in five domains including knowing the person, understanding communicative intentions, personalizing the physical and social environment, using positive verbal strategies and using non-verbal approaches. Care staff could then review the evidence-based interaction approaches in QUALII to ensure proper implementation of the daily care interactions with the residents.

"There is an urgent need to support the quality of relationships between staff and residents living with dementia," Paudel said. "Interactions between staff and residents are foundational to those relationships. Lack of understanding of the interactions as a process can lead to poor interactions further negatively impacting care delivery, response to treatment, and resident and staff satisfaction."

The researchers aim to establish and validate QUALII to evaluate quality and guide improvement of daily interactions in ADRD care. They plan to accomplish this by gathering expert feedback on QUALII, followed by observation of interactions between staff and residents in select AL settings and scoring them using the grading system in QUALII, whereby a higher score will indicate a better and more positive quality of interaction.

With research and practice applicability, QUALII could play a significant role in advancing knowledge and practice in ADRD care, according to the researchers. By improving daily interactions between staff and residents, strong relationships can flourish, the researchers said, noting that such relationships are critical to person-centered care efforts in ADRD research and practice.

The ARCOM funding program is the first collaborative program to address these care and outcome measures. It aims to address the Alzheimer’s Association’s Dementia Care Practice Recommendations including person-centered care, assessment/care planning, ongoing care for behavioral and psychological problems in dementia and staffing by promoting quality dementia care.