Improving professional practice in the disclosure of a diagnosis of dementia: A modeling experiment to evaluate a theory-based intervention

Abstract

Background: Among health professionals, there is wide variation in the practice of disclosing a diagnosis of dementia to patients. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of one theory-based and two pragmatic interventions on intention to perform three behaviors, namely (1) finding out what the patient already knows or suspects about their diagnosis; (2) using the actual words "dementia" or "Alzheimer's disease" when talking to the patient (i.e., the use of explicit terminology); (3) exploring what the diagnosis means to the patient. Method: Within an intervention-modeling process, members of old-age mental health teams in England were sent postal questionnaires measuri..