Strategies that pay attention to simple human needs hold the promise of a quiet revolution in the care of people suffering dementia according to a leading aged care nursing researcher.

Professor Lynn Chenoweth of the UTS Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health heads a team that has just begun a clinical trial of the benefits of patient management founded on careful observation and practical compassion.

Backed by a $200,000 Australian Health Minister's Priority Grant, the study involves 15 aged care residential facilities in Sydney that provide high-care services to people with dementia.

Five of the facilities will act as a control group while in others staff will be trained in two "person-centred" management strategies, Dementia Care Mapping and Person-Centred Care.

Professor Chenoweth, UTS Professor of Aged and Extended Care Nursing and Director of the Health and Ageing Research Unit of the South East Sydney–Illawarra Health Service, said a pilot study had already shown positive results in reducing the incidence and severity of challenging behaviours among aged care residents with cognitive impairment.

"We've found that when we explain how to manage certain people there are changes," Professor Chenoweth said. "We already know for sure that agitation, depression and acting out behaviours are reduced where person-centred methods are introduced. This clinical trial will compare two methods to see which is most effective."

Professor Chenoweth said Dementia Care Mapping involved recording observations of the most significant things happening to residents and scoring them on a scale from "ill-being" to "wellbeing" and then feeding this information back to care staff.

"When staff discover the triggers that stimulate wellbeing or ill-being in the person with dementia, they are more likely to be mindful of the person's particular needs, likes and dislikes," she said.

"It won't take more time than to sit the person with others around a table and give them a picture book, or provide them with a box of different shaped objects or photos of people from their past. Yet these simple things may provide immense satisfaction and interest for the older person who has lost a sense of their present circumstances."

Professor Chenoweth said that at the heart of the approach was a recognition that normal human social and emotional needs do not disappear because a person has dementia. "There can be an assumption that the intelligent person is gone and the person left can be manipulated," she said.

"People with dementia still have feelings. When they are not treated as sentient human beings it can trigger disturbed behaviour such as withdrawing, becoming aggressive, severe agitation or screaming.

"We want to demonstrate to staff that everything they do has an impact – every action has a reaction – but the methods we propose don't make life harder, quite the reverse.

"No additional staff are needed and it doesn't cost more. All they have to do is to remember that the ultimate aim of care is to improve the person's state of wellbeing and change the way they relate to the person."

The research team includes: Professor Jane Stein-Parbury, Professor of Mental Health Nursing at UTS and South East Sydney-Illawarra Area Health Service (SESIAHS), Professor Henry Brodaty, Professor of Psychogeriatrics and Director, Department of Old Age Psychiatry, University of NSW and SESIAHS; Dr Yun-Hee Jeon, Nursing Research Officer, Health and Ageing Research Unit, SESIAHS; Dr Madeleine King, Senior Lecturer, UTS Centre for Health Economics, Research and Evaluation (CHERE); Associate Professor Marion Haas, Deputy Director, CHERE; and, Professor Kaarin Anstey, Fellow and Director, Ageing Research Unit, Australian National University.