Wandering in Long-Term Care

The wandering behavior of persons with dementia is a common problem in long-term care. However, in the design of interventions, the emphasis is on safety, and little consideration has been given to the meaning of the behavior for the person who wanders. This paper uses the Need-driven Dementiacompromised Behavior (NDB) model to demonstrate that the expression of wandering is unique to a given person in a particular context or situation. Elements of the model illustrate how particular patterns and amounts of wandering may reflect different bases of the behavior, such as global cognitive decline, visual spatial deficits, or perseveration. Differing bases for wandering would consequently call for different intervention strategies. Studies about wandering that examine the phenomenon in greater detail and consider more than its overall amount or related outcomes, such as eloping, are needed. Findings from such studies can help health care professionals to better detect probable causes of wandering in the clin