Understanding the Context of Nursing Care for People with Dementia in Hospital: Enabling Adoption of Interventions to Improve Care |
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Being admitted to hospital can be upsetting and difficult for people with dementia and has been associated with negative outcomes such as longer length of stay, increased likelihood of admission to nursing homes, an increased risk of death and risk of conditions such as urinary tract infections, dehydration, pneumonia and delirium. Nursing care is central to a positive hospitalization experience for people with dementia. There is an increasing interest in improving nursing care for people with dementia in hospital through developing, implementing and evaluating nursing interventions. The aim of this research is to better understand the context of the hospital environment in relation to nursing care of people with dementia. This project has multiple parts:
- a mixed methods review of the literature focusing on nursing interventions that aim to improve the care of people with dementia in the hospital. (complete and awaiting publication)
- interviews with people with dementia who have had recent hospitalizations and their caregivers describing their experiences with hospital care.
- Interviews and focus groups with hospital staff and leaders on caring for people with dementia in the hospital, including what works and barriers to care.
- a review of the literature relating to how therapeutic recreation can work together with nursing to improve the care for people living with dementia in hospital.
People with Dementia’s Experiences of Primary Care: Exploring how collaborative family practice teams address the needs of people with dementia |
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This CIHR funded project aims to explore the primary care experience in Nova Scotia from the perspectives of people living with dementia and their informal caregivers. Most research on providing support for people with dementia tends to exclude the voices of people with dementia themselves. Health equity advocates recommend that any processes for reforming health policy and practice include the participation of the groups that they are aiming to support. This approach attempts to embody the phrase "Nothing about us, without us." People with dementia have a lot to offer and to teach about how health care can be improved to better meet their needs. More approaches to research that support people living with dementia's inclusion in the planning, implementation, participation, analysis and knowledge mobilization of research are needed. This project is trialing story-based research tools for learning about how people with dementia's life histories and current lived contexts shape their perceptions of health care as well as how they engage with health care services. The tools will be developed in collaboration with people with dementia. The aim is to contribute to the design and implementation of research tools that may be used to promote greater inclusion of people with dementia in improving health care research and practice.
Flipping Stigma |
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The goal of this project is to address stigma in the context of primary care and make the Flipping Stigma toolkit useful for primary care providers. Guided by a steering group that includes people with dementia, doctors, and nurses from BC, Alberta and Nova Scotia, we will plan a cross-Canada online forum to learn how the toolkitshould be adaptedso primary care providers can explore and gain confidence about how to work more effectively with their patients who have dementia
Intersections in Aging; Equitable, Inclusive, and Accessible Approaches to Collaborative Care to Older Adults |
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Open Educational Resources are free learning and teaching resources hosted on publicly accessible databases. This OER will be hosted on Creative Commons. The aims of this Open Educational Resource (OER) project are to provide learning resources that will help to address equity concerns in health care with older adults by fostering student/practitioner awareness, confidence and capacities in providing collaborative gerontological care from an EDIA (equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility) standpoint. These resources will also be available for use across disciplines within the postsecondary context, as well as for professional development purposes for practitioners in healthcare settings – including professional contexts where student training and mentorship frequently takes place.
Primary Healthcare for People with Dementia: Exploring Care Provided by Collaborative Family Practice Teams in Nova Scotia |
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Collaborative models of primary health care are positioned to meet the complex health and social needs of those diagnosed with dementia through providing integrated, person-centred care by a team of two or more interdisciplinary professionals. While the Nova Scotia Dementia Strategy supports collaborative models of PHC for people with dementia in the form of Collaborative Family Practice Teams (CFPTs). there remains a dearth of specific frameworks for providing dementia care or primary care for persons with dementia through either CFPTs or alternative PHC providers. As a result, this research seeks to examine not only how Nova Scotia is currently filling the care gaps left by a lack of dementia specific regulations with more general accessibility focused frameworks of care, but also to suggest what an ideal dementia care framework may look like if adopted in the future, based on the existing literature supporting CFPTs and dementia care.
The effectiveness of alternatives to residential care for older people with on-going health and social care needs |
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This project is being conducted in partnership with the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) Evidence Alliance. Together with a citizen partner, we are conducting a review of published academic articles to explore the effectiveness of current programs aimed to keep older adults with multiple health and social care needs at home. Older adults are more likely to have ongoing health conditions (diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for example), and functional limitations (such as mobility or cognitive changes). These often lead to the need for formal care, which is typically provided by nursing homes. However, there are programs that combine supports and services in the community to address these needs of older people allowing them to remain in their homes. The aim of this research is to synthesize the evidence on programs that offer individualized, multi-factorial support to community dwelling older people long term. This study has the potential to identify effective interventions and programs for supporting older people with on-going health and social care needs living in the community who would otherwise require long-term residential care.