The Purpose Program: Improving Quality of Life of Nursing Home Residents with Dementia Through Participation in Meaningful Activity

Abstract

Before the pandemic, the memory care residents at Aspen Place Health Campus (APHC) had fulfilling schedules with limited downtime. The residents were provided with vast opportunities for meaningful activity and occupational engagement provided by the nursing staff and activities department. During the pandemic, APHC was forced to stop all activities with the memory care residents due to safety restrictions and precautions. Since then, APHC has been instructed to resume “normal” pre-pandemic daily activities and programming. The activities department was successful in providing the memory care residents activities, however the nursing staff was not due to high staff turnover, and limited guidance and resources on the activities they should had been conducting with the residents. Because of this, the memory care residents were given limited opportunities to engage in meaningful activities during downtime, which resulted in poor mood, increased sedentary behavior, and overall decreased quality of life (QOL). There was a gap between what the memory care residents wanted and needed to do and what APHC provided for them. This capstone project, titled The Purpose Project, was focused on providing APHC an activity program that consisted of over 80 meaningful and evidence-based activities for the nursing staff to implement with the memory care residents to reduce sedentary time, improve mood and increase QOL of the residents. The Purpose Project was conducted twice a day, every weekday for five and a half weeks with participating memory care residents. Overall, Dementia Quality of Life (DEMQOL) scores increased by an average of 13 points for the participating residents, 92% of the activities resulted in positive mood after and sedentary time of the participating memory care residents was reduced by 66%.