I am a PhD student with a pharmacy degree from Pakistan. Research was something I had not covered in detail in my degree, but I had undertaken a few clinical projects back home. During these projects, I had the interesting experience of interacting with patients and listening to them. This inspired me to explore patients’ experiences of the services offered to them in healthcare settings. Then when I came to the UK to start a one-year pharmacy-based research degree in 2016, it seemed natural for me to look at patient experiences in more detail for my Masters’ project. I was able to interact with patients receiving chemotherapy at day treatment units in Oxfordshire, to develop a satisfaction survey and receive patient views on a relatively new pharmacy service. I was really happy that more than 70% of patients were able to fill out my survey and tell us what they liked and how the pharmacy service could be made even better.

After completing my MSc, I stayed on at the University of Reading to start my PhD in pharmacy. The aim of my PhD is to look at the use of antipsychotics in residents with dementia in care homes. Specifically, I am interested in finding out what staff working in care homes think about the use of these medicines in their residents. This is an important area of work because the voices of staff working at the frontline of care services often go unheard. I am particularly excited to be using a survey to complete my work, having used the skills I learnt in my Masters’ degree to design my questionnaire. Although I have found some similar studies to my work, when I looked at these in detail, none of the previous studies are detailed enough and importantly they do not seem to have made a big impact in practice. This made me even more determined to get on and develop a questionnaire. Knowing what staff working in care homes think about the use of antipsychotics in dementia could really help improve the lives of residents and the work environment for staff looking after them.

I needed to develop a questionnaire to capture the views of nurses and carers who look after residents in care homes. Instead of starting from scratch, I adapted an existing questionnaire from a Dutch study, naming mine as the Antipsychotics in Dementia Attitude Questionnaire (ADAQ). This is an English online questionnaire based on a theory named the Theory of Planned Behaviour. The questionnaire has also gone through the validation and pilot study stages and is now known as Antipsychotics in Dementia Attitude Questionnaire Version 3 (ADAQ-V3). I am hoping therefore that my survey is realistic, theoretical and evidence-based. I am also hoping that my study will not only gather views about the use of antipsychotics in care homes, but it will also help other health professionals to reflect on the prescribing of antipsychotics by hearing the collated views of staff who are in direct contact with residents with dementia.

Through this blog I would like to invite you to take part in my study which aims to understand the views of carers and nurses about the use of antipsychotics for patients with dementia living in care homes, via ADAQ-V3. A link to the questionnaire appears here:

https://reading.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/adaq-questionnaire-version-3-copy