District nurses' attitudes towards involuntary treatment in dementia care at home: A cross-sectional study

One in two persons living with dementia (PLWD) at home receive care which they resist to and/or have not given consent to, defined as involuntary treatment. District nurses play a key role in the use of involuntary treatment. However, little is known how their attitudes and opinions influence the use of involuntary treat-ment. This cross-sectional study aims to investigate the attitudes of district nurses towards the use of invol-untary treatment in dementia care at home, determinants and their opinion about its restrictiveness and discomfort. Results show that district nurses perceive involuntary treatment as regular part of nursing care, having neither positive nor negative attitude towards its appropriateness. They consider involuntary treat-ment usage as moderately restrictive to PLWD and feel moderately uncomfortable when using it. These find-ings underscore the need to increase the awareness of district nurses regarding the negative consequences of involuntary treatment use to PLWD at home.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)