Dementia care research: The key role of nurses and nursing

摘要

It has long been recognised that while finding cures for the various disease processes underpinning dementia is highly desirable, significant research effort also needs expending on informing prevention, risk reduction, diagnosis, treatment and care (World Health Organization, 2017). Given nurses' frontline role in the organisation and delivery of services to people at risk of and living with dementia worldwide, nursing has a key role to play in the research community delivering on this broad and complicated agenda (Ministerial Advisory Group on Dementia Research, 2011). This special issue of the International Journal of Nursing Studies focuses on dementia care in particular, and includes high quality research that draws attention to the contribution of nurses and nursing in high quality health care for men and women living with dementia. We invited and selected papers reporting the evaluation of interventions in which nursing plays a key role and that are focused on improving dementia care quality. We have also included papers that report research on the organisation and delivery of dementia care, and that improve understanding of the requirements for health systems that support high quality care delivery. The breadth and quality of contributions to this issue demonstrate that nurses are an important part of the research effort in care research, but a step-change in contribution to the field is still needed, including shaping investment, funding and capacity-building in the field.