JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Previous research has suggested care home interactions need significant improvements, especially between staff and residents with dementia. Reasons for the lack of interactions are staff time pressures and residents’ language impairments. Although residents may experience reduced language abilities, they can continue to communicate through other forms, including non-verbal communication and music. Person Attuned Musical Interactions (PAMI) is a staff training tool that provides staff with music therapy skills-sharing skills to promote high-quality interactions between staff and residents using non-verbal communication and music. The tool was originally developed in Denmark. To ensure the tool is appropriate for UK care homes a team of researchers in the UK have culturally adapted the tool.

Objective:

This study aims to investigate the appropriateness of the adapted UK manual for UK care homes and to explore the impact of PAMI on residents with dementia and care staff.

Methods:

The project consists of two phases, a qualitative field-testing study and a mixed-methods evaluation study which have been developed following the medical research council’s guidelines for complex interventions. Care staff and residents with dementia will be recruited from care homes in Lincolnshire, where the care staff will be trained in the PAMI intervention before implementing the intervention into their daily routines. Fortnightly reflective sessions will be provided throughout the studies to provide supervision and monitoring. The qualitative methods include interviews, reflective session transcripts, diary entries and resident experience questionnaires. The quantitative outcome measures will measure residents’ music engagement, staff’s dementia competence, residents’ quality of life and staff burden. The resident’s music engagement will be administered at 9 fortnightly time points. Staff’s dementia competence, resident’s quality of life and staff burden will be administered at pre and post timepoints.

Results:

The studies have been funded by The Music Therapy Charity as part of a PhD studentship. The studies received ethical approval on the 21st of June 2021 (Reference Number:21/LO/0283). The study began recruiting in September 2021, with plans for the evaluation study to end by 2023.

Conclusions:

The study will be the first to investigate the culturally adapted UK PAMI. Therefore, it will provide feedback on the appropriateness of the manual for UK care homes. The PAMI intervention has the potential to offer high-quality music intervention training to a larger population of care homes that may currently be restricted by finances, available time, and a lack of training opportunities.