Feasibility of a Culturally Specific DEmentia Competence Education for Nursing Home Taskforce (DECENT) Programme: A Mixed-Method Approach

Abstract

Although educational resources have been developed to build staff‘s dementia care competence in Western culture, their applicability and cultural relevance to the Chinese population are questionable. To address this gap, the DEmentia Competence Education for Nursing home Taskforce (DECENT) programme was developed and tailored to Chinese staff. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary effects of the DECENT programme. A one-group pretest–posttest study, embedded with a qualitative component, was conducted among 12 healthcare professionals. The DECENT programme comprised eight topics covering essential competencies in dementia care. It was delivered face-to-face by a qualified educator once per week for 60–90 min over 8 weeks. Outcomes were measured at baseline and immediately post-intervention. A satisfaction survey and individual interviews were conducted post-intervention to understand participants’ perceptions and experience with the intervention. Nine participants finished the post-intervention assessment. Except for staff’s attitudes towards people with dementia, quantitative findings generally demonstrated positive changes following the intervention. Three categories were identified from the qualitative data: well-developed programme, perceived benefits, and barriers. The findings showed that the DECENT programme is feasible and is perceived by nursing home staff as relevant and useful to daily practice. A larger-scale study is needed to evaluate its effectiveness.

Staff's experiences of a culturally specific DEmentia Competence Education for Nursing home Taskforce (DECENT) programme: A qualitative process evaluation

“…The synthesized results of the competency frameworks comprises a range of essential domains for capacity building in dementia care, including knowledge and understanding of dementia and the related challenging behaviours, physical and psychosocial wellbeing of people with dementia, management strategies, person-centred care, environment, interaction with families, daily living activities, communication, end-of-life care, care staff's self-care and development, teamwork and ethics in dementia care. Details of the DECENT programme are reported elsewhere (Zhao et al, 2022a(Zhao et al, , 2022b. The domains divided into eight sessions were delivered on a weekly basis through a face-to-face format, with each lasted for approximately 60-90 min.…”

“…We have developed a culturally specific DEmentia Competence Education for Nursing home Taskforce (DECENT) programme for the Chinese community by following the Medical Research Council (MRC) framework (Zhao et al, 2022a, 2022b). The development process included a systematic review of existing dementia care educational programmes (Zhao, Liu, & Chan, 2021), a qualitative study to explore the current practice for dementia care in nursing homes in mainland China and the training needs in dementia care of nursing home staff (Zhao, Liu, Ding, & Chan, 2021) and a review of three widely used comprehensive competency frameworks for guiding the development of educational programmes in dementia care across care settings and disciplines (Smythe et al, 2014; Traynor et al, 2011; Tsaroucha et al, 2013).…”