Promoting Positive Care Interactions (PPCI) in Assisted Living

Nearly one million individuals living in 28,900 assisted living facilities (ALFs) in the U.S. participate in daily care interactions, defined as any verbal or nonverbal exchange between staff and residents during physical and social care activities. While there are positive care interactions, poor care interactions also persist with prevalence as high as 25% in long-term care including ALFs. Individuals with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) are especially at risk for poor care interactions due to ineffective staff approaches such as negative touching (e.g., quickly removing clothes to bathe a resident), being overprotective (e.g., restricting activity for safety concerns), and lack of verbal or non-verbal contact during care. Persistent poor care interactions can negatively affect both residents and staff. Thus, there is a need to replace poor care interactions with positive care interactions, now more than ever given the worsening staff retention related to COVID-19 pandemic, and constant need to train new employees.

Positive care interaction refers to care interactions where staff use positive approaches such as honoring resident's abilities and preferences, recognizing resident's responses/non-verbal cues, acknowledging resident's effort, providing role modeling and verbal cues, managing self-responses, and using a calm respectful approach for appropriate delivery of care. It has been long known that use of positive approaches benefits both residents (e.g., less behavioral distress) and staff (e.g., greater competence in care). Yet, poor interactions continue in ALFs due to interlocking barriers associated with residents' ADRD-related communication and other difficulties and behaviors of distress (e.g., agitation), as well as staff's knowledge and training deficits in ADRD care; ALFs have fewer licensing and training mandates for staff. Lack of cultural concordance can also contribute to poor interactions. The ALF staff, often younger (mean age=38.3 yrs.) females (83.8%) with almost half representing racial minorities (47.6%) care for largely non-Hispanic white (81.4%) resident population >=65 years (93.4%). Additionally, there are systemic barriers including limited organizational engagement in implementing and sustaining these approaches, lack of environmental infrastructure (e.g., controlled noise and availability of augmentative devices such as pocket talker) and policies (e.g., consistent assignments) to support positive care interactions, and lack of adequate mentoring and support for staff. It is crucial to address these issues and barriers and train ALF staff on positive care interactions, particularly since prior work has targeted nursing homes and focused on social interactions or verbal communication.

Therefore, this study proposes Promoting Positive Care Interactions (PPCI), a four-step approach, based on Social Ecological Model (SEM) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), to optimize daily care interactions between staff and residents with ADRD in ALFs. The four steps include: 1) stakeholder engagement in developing facility specific goals; (2) environment and policy assessments; (3) flexible staff education; and (4) ongoing mentorship, motivation, and support (in-person visits and text messages) for staff to optimize care interactions. These four steps are based on prior work implementing function & behavior focused intervention studies but have never been used in a care interaction-focused intervention nor been tested for cultural responsiveness. This study will follow a cluster randomized trial in a sample of 60 residents and 60 staff in four ALFs in central PA (approx. 15 residents, 15 staff/ALF) who agree and consent to participate in this study. The treatment group will receive all four steps of PPCI while the control arm will receive education only.