Semi-skilled or unskilled nursing care aides primarily provide direct care to residents in long-term care (LTC) facilities in China and many other countries around the world. There has been a significantly increased commitment from nurses and other formally trained professionals to provide person-centered care (PCC) for people with dementia (PwD). However, it is still unclear how nursing care aides who provide direct care to older residents with dementia understand and adopt PCC in their daily work. It is of utmost importance to understand person-centered dementia care from the perspectives of care aides, and to identify implications to facilitate and sustain their efforts in providing quality care for older residents with dementia. We found that the seemingly beneficial mental models used by care aides in their work can hinder them from playing a more adaptive role in tailoring their care to the needs of older residents. Infantilizing older residents with dementia and labeling them using mother wit can prevent meaningful, equal, and person-centered conversations between both parties. Care aides do not have regular formal interactions and sensemaking with nurses and other professionals in nursing homes. Increasing interactions and communication between care aides and health care professionals in nursing homes can lead to insight for changing the approach to in-service training to achieve better acceptance by care aides. The current study derives implications for operationalizing and embedding the principles of PCC in daily care.
