Daily time management in dementia: qualitative interviews with persons with dementia and their significant others

Persons with dementia encounter time-related problems and significant others often need to provide support in daily time management and use of time assistive technology (AT). Further research has been requested on how time AT for persons with dementia affects the situation of significant others. Moreover, there are a few previous qualitative studies on the experiences of time AT by persons with dementia. This study explores the experiences of persons with dementia and significant others in daily time management and their perceptions on how time AT affects everyday life.

Semi-structured interviews with persons with mild to moderate dementia (n = 6) and significant others (n = 9) were conducted three months after receiving prescribed time AT. Interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

A main category "Support by significant others is always part of daily time management", and three categories "Facing new challenges", "Using strategies to handle changes", and "Time assistive technology in daily life" illustrated that significant others provided support for daily time management in all phases of dementia. This support was often embedded in other kinds of support for emerging challenges. Support in time management was needed from an early stage in dementia, and responsibility for time management was gradually transferred to significant others. Time AT could support time orientation and were important for sharing the time management conducted by others but did not enable independent time management.

Time-related assessments and interventions should be offered at an early stage of dementia to increase the possibility of maintaining daily time management skills. Using time AT to communicate time might increase agency and participation in daily occupations for persons with dementia. Given the central role of significant others for daily time management, the society needs to adequately support persons with dementia lacking support from significant others.