Day Care

This study explored the perceptions of 12 patients attending a day care unit in June/July 1996, with the purpose of finding out what was important to these people about their day care experiences. It used a phenomenological methodology derived from Paterson and Zderad's Humanistic Nursing Theory. The patients described numerous aspects of the day care service that were important to them. All 12 people interviewed considered the service satisfactory, and a number considered it to be more than anyone could or should expect. Day care was found to help them feel comfortable, to feel of value and to feel less isolated. In addition, the participants were found to be living with cancer in two different ways. All 12 knew they had cancer and might be terminally ill. Yet some seemed to "tolerate" their life with cancer, whereas others saw it as requiring "adaptation". The day care service was supporting both these styles of managing life with cancer. The interpretation of the findings suggests that the reason patients expressed such satisfaction with the service offered was because the care was humanistic. It responded to individual opinions, feelings and understandings of health and well-being, by giving people time and responding to their individual concerns. In this way, it was flexible enough to support people in managing their illness using their own preferred style.

All over the world, day care center is one of the recognized institutional settings to ensure early childhood care and development. In Bangladesh day care centers serve as shelter for children while parents engage in their professional responsibilities. In this study, a day care center in Bangladesh was investigated to find out the initiatives implemented to address the issues of early childhood development and parents' perception in this regard. Mixed methods approach was followed for collecting and analyzing data. Required data was collected from the parents of the enrolled children and a teacher of the early childhood development center. Various documents and websites of the day care center, government policies and frameworks were also analyzed to see the real practice and its relationship with the policy guidelines. The findings of the study revealed that the purposes of the parents for enrolling their children in the day care center were fulfilled in a significant level. Parents also expressed their satisfaction about the services in early childhood development through physical, social, emotional, cognitive development and school preparation of the day care center as well. Besides, some parents suggested increasing the service hours in a day so that they can perform their other duties more comfortably. In addition, few parents want to see religious education in the very early stage of their children.

Different definitions of quality of life (QOL) are found in the literature. This raised the question which domains are viewed as really important by persons with dementia. In an explorative study the opinions of persons with dementia (community-dwelling and living in nursing homes), were compared to those of professional carers and instruments for QOL in dementia. Data were gathered through interviews, focus groups and literature study. Most QOL-domains mentioned as important by persons with dementia were also acknowledged by carers and in measurement instruments. Some domains, however, were not mentioned by the carers ('sense of aesthetics', 'financial situation', 'being useful' and 'spirituality'), or not selected in the measuring instruments ('security and privacy', 'self-determination and freedom', 'being useful' and 'spirituality'). This indicates differences in perspectives on quality of life between persons with ...

This paper is an Italian Expert Consensus Document on multidimensional treatment of obesity and eating disorders. The Document is based on a wide survey of expert opinion. It presents, in particular, considerations regarding how clinicians go about choosing the most appropriate site of treatment for a given patient suffering from obesity and/or eating disorders: outpatient, partial hospitalization, residential rehabilitation centre, inpatient hospitalization. In a majority of instances obesity and eating disorders are long-term diseases and require a multiprofessional team-approach. In determining an initial level of care or a change to a different level of care, it is essential to consider together the overall physical condition, medical complications, disabilities, psychiatric comorbidity, psychology, behaviour, family, social resources, environment, and available services. We first created a review manuscript, a skeleton algorithm and two rating scales, based on the published gui...

This issue examines the contribution and the profile of the adult day care workforce in comparison to other adult social care workforces; mainly from residential and domiciliary care settings. The purpose is to provide intelligence about this particular workforce within the context of widespread closures of day care centres and the personalisation agenda.

Descriptive and multinomial modelling analyses, using 71,861 individual workers’ records, established that the profile of adult day care workers is significantly different from those working in either residential or domiciliary care settings.

Judging by the information provided by employers through the NMDS-SC, adult day care workers are relatively older, less ethnically diverse and are more likely to be men than the other two workforces. They appear to hold relatively higher qualification levels and to contain larger proportions of managers and supervisors than the other two settings. Adult day care workers travel considerably shorter distances to work than domiciliary workers but longer distances than residential workers. The adult day care workforce also appears to be more stable, with a significantly larger proportion of workers on full-time and permanent contracts. There is significantly less reliance on agency or temporary workers in day services compared to the residential and domiciliary care sectors.

To understand the significance of clay art therapy for psychiatric patients admitted in a day hospital. Qualitative, descriptive and exploratory research, undertaken with 16 patients in a day hospital in Londrina, in the state of Parana, Brazil, who participated in seven clay therapy sessions. Data collection took place from January to July 2012 through interviews guided by a semi structured questionnaire and the data were submitted to content analysis. Three themes emerged: Becoming familiar with clay art therapy; Feeling clay therapy; and Realizing the effect of clay therapy. The use of clay as a therapeutic method by psychiatric patients promoted creativity, self-consciousness, and benefited those who sought anxiety relief.

It is posited within the literature that the sexualised challenging behaviour of adults with intellectual disability may be influenced by low levels of sexual knowledge, lack of sexual experience and unmet sexual needs. In this study, individuals with sexualised challenging behaviour were identified and matched for gender, age and ability level with individuals recruited to the non-sexualised and no challenging behaviour groups. All (n = 24) were interviewed using the Socio-Sexual Knowledge and Attitudes Tool – Revised (SSKAAT-R) and the Sexual Knowledge, Experience and Needs Scale for Intellectual Disability (Sex-Ken-ID) to assess their sexual knowledge, experience and needs. Adaptive behaviour was measured as a covariate. In the current study, contrary to expectations in the wider literature, the sexualised challenging behaviour group showed significantly higher levels of sexual knowledge in several areas when adaptive behaviour was controlled. Their needs in relation to Dating and Intimacy were also significantly higher but no differences were found between groups in relation to sexual experience. The implications of these findings for service provision are outlined along with the considerations of directions for future research.

To test the hypotheses that older people and their informal carers are not disadvantaged by home-based rehabilitation (HBR) relative to day hospital rehabilitation (DHR) and that HBR is less costly. Two-arm randomised controlled trial. Four trusts in England providing both HBR and DHR. Clinical staff reviewed consecutive referrals to identify subjects who were potentially suitable for randomisation according to the defined inclusion criteria. Patients were randomised to receive either HBR or DHR. The primary outcome measure was the Nottingham Extended Activities of Daily Living (NEADL) scale. Secondary outcome measures included the EuroQol 5 dimensions (EQ-5D), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Therapy Outcome Measures (TOMs), hospital admissions and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30) for carers. Overall, 89 subjects were randomised and 42 received rehabilitation in each arm of the trial. At the primary end point of 6 months there were 32 and 33 patients in the HB...

Children use art as a newfound way to express what they like, who they are, and how they see the world around them. It goes beyond replicating a flower or cat shape, which is very important in itself, but instead by creating an art piece they are learning to be themselves.