JAMDA
Volume 7, Issue 7 , Pages 456-459, September 2006

Day Care for Demented Elderly in a Dairy Farm Setting: Positive First Impressions

  • Jos M.G.A. Schols, MD, PhD

      Affiliations

    • Department Tranzo, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
    • Department of General Practrice, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
    • Vivre, Maastricht, The Netherlands
    • Corresponding Author InformationAddress correspondence to Jos M.G.A. Schols, MD, PhD, Department Tranzo, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
    • ,
  • Conny van der Schriek-van Meel

      Affiliations

    • Care Farm “Enjoying Life,” Den Hout, The Netherlands
    • De Riethorst, Geertruidenberg, The Netherlands

published online 26 July 2006.

Objective

Long-term care for demented patients in the Netherlands is changing. The focus is now more on quality of life and delaying institutionalization by offering substitutes to the traditional nursing home. In this article, we present a new type of day care, offered on a small dairy farm setting.

Design

A small observational study was performed to get a first impression of the effects of care farm day care on demented patients. Also, global comparisons were made between patients attending day care in the farm setting and patients attending regular day care in a nursing home.

Results

Demented patients attending day care on the farm showed fewer behavioral problems, used, on average, fewer drugs, including psychotropic drugs, and were more actively involved in normal daily activities. Moreover, family caregivers were more satisfied with this new type of day care.

Conclusion

Currently, there is only a scant amount of information to support the therapeutic effects of day care in farm settings. This experience indicates a positive trend of this new form of day care. Well-designed longitudinal follow-up studies are needed to provide more substantial evidence of positive patient outcomes in this new care setting.

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 Schols and van der Schriek-van Meel

PII: S1525-8610(06)00302-1

doi:10.1016/j.jamda.2006.05.011

JAMDA
Volume 7, Issue 7 , Pages 456-459, September 2006

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