Version 1
: Received: 23 July 2024 / Approved: 23 July 2024 / Online: 24 July 2024 (16:41:28 CEST)
How to cite:
Zhu, Y.; Song, T.; Zhang, Z.; Deng, C.; Yin, M.; Li, W.; Chang, H. C. (.; Yu, P.; Song, L. (. COVID-19 and Its Influence on Prevalence of Dementia and Agitation in Australian Residential Age Care: A Comparative Study. Preprints2024, 2024071865. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1865.v1
Zhu, Y.; Song, T.; Zhang, Z.; Deng, C.; Yin, M.; Li, W.; Chang, H. C. (.; Yu, P.; Song, L. (. COVID-19 and Its Influence on Prevalence of Dementia and Agitation in Australian Residential Age Care: A Comparative Study. Preprints 2024, 2024071865. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1865.v1
Zhu, Y.; Song, T.; Zhang, Z.; Deng, C.; Yin, M.; Li, W.; Chang, H. C. (.; Yu, P.; Song, L. (. COVID-19 and Its Influence on Prevalence of Dementia and Agitation in Australian Residential Age Care: A Comparative Study. Preprints2024, 2024071865. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1865.v1
APA Style
Zhu, Y., Song, T., Zhang, Z., Deng, C., Yin, M., Li, W., Chang, H. C. (., Yu, P., & Song, L. (. (2024). COVID-19 and Its Influence on Prevalence of Dementia and Agitation in Australian Residential Age Care: A Comparative Study. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1865.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Zhu, Y., Ping Yu and Lixin (Lee) Song. 2024 "COVID-19 and Its Influence on Prevalence of Dementia and Agitation in Australian Residential Age Care: A Comparative Study" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1865.v1
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted older people in residential aged care facilities (RACFs), especially those with dementia. This retrospective cohort study investigates the impact of the pandemic on agitation incidents within this population in 40 Australian RACFs. We compared pre-pandemic data (January-October 2019) with during-pandemic data (same months in 2020 and 2021) from electronic health records (EHRs) using Python to extract information from nursing notes. Various statistical analyses, including descriptive statistics to summarize the data, and a chi-square test to examine any significant association between the COVID-19 pandemic and the prevalence of dementia and agitation in dementia. Dementia prevalence dropped by 1.98% in 2021 compared to 2019, and by 4.09% compared to 2020 (p < 0.05). Overall agitation symptoms decreased by 20.1% from 2019 to 2021 (p < 0.05), but six specific symptoms increased: resisting (28.98%), wandering (11.78%), restlessness (3.19%), complaining (10.1%), arguing (2.36%), and outbursts (1.74%) (p < 0.05). Conversely, pacing decreased by 15.88% and speaking loudly de-creased by 10.9% (p < 0.05). Over half of the care recipients experienced agitation symptoms 2-5 times each year, increasing from 50.56% in 2019 to 58.28% in 2021 (p < 0.05). It is important to exercise caution regarding the accuracy of these findings due to the reduced opportunity for busy care staff to record behavioral changes caused by the isolation of individuals in their rooms during the pandemic.
Keywords
COVID-19; dementia; agitation; residential aged care; nursing home; electronic health record; natural language processing
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Public Health and Health Services
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
