Longitudinal Changes of Caregiving Needs and Service Utilization and the Care Model for Elderly Persons with Dementia.

Dementia is a long-term chronic disease including multi-syndrome. Different syndrome and behavioral problems may happen at different phases of the entire illness trajectory. Providing care to elderly persons with dementia have found to cause extreme burden for family caregivers and affect their physical and psychological health. Hence, it is important to explore the changes in care needs and service utilization of the elderly persons with dementia in accordance with the illness trajectory in order to provide effective and efficient services. Currently, the utilization of services in Taiwan is relatively low despite the fact that there are many demands. Therefore, both the confirmation of care need for elders with dementia and the integration of service utilization resources are the important fundamentals to develop and construct the care model for dementia. This study is planning to take the concept of illness trajectory as a framework and to analyze existing large scale longitudinal quantitative data base and qualitative data in Taiwan to explore the changes in the need（or demand）, service utilization and associated factors along with the illness trajectory of dementia. This study will also collect and analyze internationally and nationally published and unpublished studies related to care model for elderly persons with dementia. A systematic literature review and meta-analysis over the care model will be conducted and supported with the qualitative study to strengthen the understanding about this phenomenon. The results of this study will serve as a base for further model modification and testing, and provide a reference for policy making and practice guideline development.

Project ID:PF9708-0376
External Project ID:NSC95-2420-H182-002-KF