Roberts Et Al. (1998) Deals With Medications

¶ … Roberts et al. (1998) deals with medications in connection with nursing home residents where the mean number of drugs prescribed per patient range from 6 to 8 medications in the U.S.A., but identification of factors that result in prescribing and administration patterns of drugs are not well understood. The object of this research accordingly was to identify the factors that influence the pattern of medication use in nursing homes.

Medication data of 998 residents in 15 nursing homes in Australia were collected from the various hospitals and assessed. Statistics used included the multiple linear regressions that since many components were involved were multiple and was used to test whether there was an association between age, gender, nursing home size, and instrument rating.

Since there were various factors involved, a one-way ANOVA (going in only oen direction) had to be used where the five different influences of age, gender, the results of the instrument survey, nursing home, nursing home size (the independent variables) were evaluated against medication prescribing and administration (the dependent variables). A 2-way ANOVA was later used to assess the variance on prescribing and administration of drug (the dependent variable) after taking into consideration the effects of the nursing home (the independent variable).

It was discovered that the various types of medication prescribed and administered to the residents of the nursing homes dependent to varying extent on age and gender as well as the nursing home, the resident's functional ability, and the medical practitioner prescribing he medication. The key determinants for prescribing general drugs, laxatives, and psycholeptic medications were the resident's functional ability measured according to the instrument and the nursing home. On the other hand, it was discovered that selection of digoxin and/or diuretics primarily depended on the resident's choice but not on the medical practitioner or nursing home.

Study 2

Since loneliness is a common problem in a long-term care facility and pets have been shown to reduce that loneliness, Banks et al. (2008) wondered whether a robotic dog would have the same impact on reducing loneliness, as would a live dog.

Residents of 3 different long-term care facilities were employed in this study. Three levels were used in this experiment -- a group that had living dogs; a group with robotic dogs; and a control group that received no animal-assisted therapy altogether. The independent variable was the dog -- either live or robotic. The dependent variable was the loneliness tested by a loneliness scale.

The comparison of the means between two groups (real dog and robot) was tested by a t-test, whereas the comparison between all 3 groups (real dog; robot; and control) was tested using an ANOVA followed by the Newman-Keuls range test whose objective is to look at all the pairs of means in order to see whether there is a differnce between them.

Results showed that in comparisons with the group that received no animal-assisted therapy, both groups of dogs (robotic and real) showed significant reduction in loneliness. A modified Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (MLAPS) showed that individuals of both groups showed high attachments to their respective dogs.