Background: Person-centeredness has had substantial uptake in the academic literature on care of older people and people with dementia. However, challenges exist in interpreting and synthesizing the evidence on effects of providing person-centered care, as the person-centered components of some intervention studies are unclear – targeting very different and highly specific aspects of person-centeredness, as well as not providing empirical data to indicate the extent to which care practice was actually perceived to become more person-centered post-intervention. Methods: The study employed a quasi-experimental, one-group pre-test–post-test design with a 12-month follow-up to explore intervention effects on person-centeredness of care and the environment (primary endpoints), and on staff strain and stress of conscience (secondary endpoints). Results: The intervention resulted in significantly higher scores on person-centeredness of care at follow-up, and the facility was rated as being significantly more hospitable at follow-up. A significant reduction of staff stress of conscience was also found at follow-up, which suggests that, to a larger extent, staff could provide the care and activities they wanted to provide after the intervention. Conclusions: The results indicated that an interactive and step-wise action-research intervention consisting of knowledge translation, generation, and dissemination, based on national guidelines for care of people with dementia, increased the staff self-reported person-centeredness of care practice, perceived hospitality of the setting, and reduced staff stress of conscience by enabling staff to provide the care and activities they want to provide.

To identify predictors of job strain in residential nursing care staff working with people with dementia. It is well known that nursing staff experience high levels of stress, but less is known about how to predict job strain. The job strain of nursing care staff (n = 344) within residential dementia care settings was assessed. Standard linear regression analysis was used to explore predictors of job strain. Data from the study shows that nursing staff in residential dementia care have a demanding job and experience high levels of strain. The linear regression model with four predictor variables explained 19% of the variability in job strain scores. Perceived caring climate of the unit, staff education level, possibilities to have discussions of difficulties and ethics at work and staff age, had a statistically significant association with job strain. The caring climate, staff education, reflective practice and staff age can be used as screening variables when predicting job strain. These predictors can assist managers and directors to identify targeted strategies for supervision and support of nursing staff to secure their well-being, and by that securing the quality of care provided to residents.