Clinical Research Directory

Dementia Moves: Protocol for a Feasibility Study

Most long-term care (LTC) residents live with frailty and dementia and the proportion with more advanced cognitive impairment is increasing. Residents with dementia often have limited functional ability to complete their activities of daily living (ADLs) and are vulnerable to further functional decline. Multicomponent exercise can help prevent functional decline, but residents with dementia are less likely to receive it and have not often been included in previous intervention studies. The Dementia Moves intervention was designed to fill this gap. It is an individually tailored multicomponent group exercise program with an aerobic warm-up and a focus on moderate to high intensity functional balance and strength training. This pilot feasibility study will examine the feasibility of delivering Dementia Moves with 16 LTC residents across 2 homes in Nova Scotia (primary outcomes: recruitment, retention, adherence, acceptability, barriers/facilitators to delivery, fidelity; secondary outcomes: ADLs, adverse events). The next step will be to conduct a larger trial to determine the effect of the intervention on ADLs. Through a parallel cluster randomized controlled trial, investigators will measure the effect of the Dementia Moves program on ADLs and adverse events (i.e., falls, fractures, hospitalizations, emergency department visits) for LTC residents with moderate to severe dementia (i.e., Mini-Mental State Exam of 20 or less).