Life story work and nursing home residents with dementia.

Research has indicated that one means of seeing clients with dementia as individual people, and gaining insight into their lives, is through listening to the stories they tell. This study, undertaken in 2007, used narrative research methodology to listen to the stories of five nursing home residents with dementia. The researcher analytically reconstructed the stories they told to provide insight into participants' understanding of themselves. Each participant told a profoundly different story, indicating that people with dementia are not a homogeneous group, but unique individuals. The study demonstrated that communication and understanding were possible, but challenging, when the participants had a diagnosis of dementia.