Agitation near the end of life with dementia: An ethnographic study of care.
Elizabeth L SampsonAisling StringerFrancesca La FrenaisShanlee HigginsMary-Jo DoyleAnne LaybourneGill LivingstonGerard LeaveyPublished in: PloS one (2019)
Care worker knowledge about agitation is not enough, and staff need organizational support to care better for people living with dementia towards end of life. Positional theory may help to explain much of the cultural-structural context that produces staff disengagement from people with dementia, offering insights on how agitation behavior is reframed by some staff as dangerous. Such behavior may be associated with low-resource institutions with minimal staff training where the personhood of staff may be neglected.