Abstract
Abstract The number of people with dementia is increasing with population ageing, most of these people live in their home environment. Understanding the needs from persons' with dementia perspective, is crucial for providing optimal care and maintaining quality of life of this population.
However available literature is rather sparse and has not been comprehensively integrated yet. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of self-reported needs of home-dwelling people with dementia.
A scoping review resulted in five main themes: social needs, psychological needs, biological/physical needs, environmental needs and the need of safety, and eight subthemes: company, meaningful activities and roles, psychological distress, memory, general physical health, dementia evaluation or diagnosis, post-diagnostic support, home, personal and environmental safety. Even though the number of research studies focusing on the needs of people with dementia is increasing, there were only a few studies investigating self-reported needs of home dwelling people with dementia.
Persons with dementia themselves are important informants about their subjective needs and care experience. Thus when assessing their self-reported needs, it is necessary to include the biological, psychological, social and environmental contexts of them to provide person-centred care.