Reminiscence in the Care of People with Mild Dementia: A Concept Analysis

To clarify the concept of reminiscence in the care of people with mild dementia, highlight its uses as a nursing intervention in dementia care, and propose an operational definition of the concept.

Reminiscence is one of the leading nonpharmacological interventions in dementia care. The existing literature lacks a unified definition of reminiscence as it applies to the care of patients with mild dementia and a precise understanding of the concept's applications in nursing care.

We derived data from literature searches in CINAHL, PsycINFO, PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Cochrane Library databases.

Concept Analysis.

The review method used was the Walker and Avant's (2019) eight-step method.

Identification of the key attributes, antecedents, consequences, and empirical referents of the concept resulted in an operational definition of the concept. The proposed operational definition identifies reminiscence in the care of patients with mild dementia as a cognitive, functional process of recalling and reconstructing distant memories using memory stimuli through mutual interaction with a trained facilitator.

Clarifying the concept will add validity to the current and future literature, help to develop new research instruments that accurately measure this concept, and function as a framework for holistic nursing interventions.