Caring for people with dementia in general hospitals

Abstract

Since 2006, the Alzheimer's Society of Lower Saxony, Germany, has been working to improve care and medical treatment for people with cognitive impairment or dementia in general hospitals. An interdisciplinary team systematically worked on the topic for several years and presented results at various symposia. In 2011, a two-stage curriculum was completed and sent in combination with additional training documents to all hospitals and nursing training colleges in Lower Saxony, Germany. The manual comprised a two-step approach with a 14-h training for hospital staff and a 160-h training for qualification of trainers and dementia appointees/chaperones. In addition, the manual included a list of 13 essential points for "dealing with demented people in a general hospital," the information sheet of the German Alzheimer's Society on aspects requiring special attention when a demented person is admitted to a hospital, short descriptions of best practice models, a list of established speakers in the field, and a 30-min film. In 2012, the project won the "Preis für Engagement und Selbsthilfe" of the Hertie Foundation and the "Niedersächsischen Gesundheitspreis" awarded by the Lower Saxon Ministry for Social, Women, Family, and Health Affairs.

Improving Treatment of Elderly Patients by Interprofessional Education in a Quality Network of Geriatric Medicine: Protocol for Evaluating an Educational Initiative

“…Initial results and experiences clearly show that the offers of the interprofessional educational initiative in geriatrics are met with serious interest from all occupational groups and that the various groups are all taking part. At the same time, the survey results about the level and need for education confirm the results of other studies in this field [9,16]. The survey results also give the responsible people in participating institutions the possibility to address the individual training needs of their staff members.…”

“…Experiences with a work shadowing program at the St. Franziskus Hospital in Münster show that exclusively training 1 occupational group is insufficient because real changes to the care situation can only be achieved through interaction between different occupations [16].…”

Care challenges in older general hospital patients

“…In general, the results serve to facilitate the effective and broader implementation of approaches which have been proved in model projects to optimize hospital care of vulnerable patient groups [6, 8, 15, 17, 20, 25, 27, 30], and to establish the knowledge of a more person-centered care culture in nonspecialized hospital settings [9, 10]. Indicating frequent, but unsolved problems in the daily care of cognitive impaired patients provides a basis for development of staff training programs.…”