Partnerships to Improve Care Training
Partnerships to Improve Care and Quality of Life for Persons with Dementia offers provider-focused training, which complements Family Involvement in Care, our family caregiver-focused training.
This 12-part online training series focuses on staff-family partnerships to improve dementia care. It uses Family Involvement in Care principles to enhance partnership-building between family and staff, as well as helping providers “know the person” with dementia and provide person-centered care in the context of changing needs.
Estimated time: 2 hours and 40 minutes + additional resources
Program Outline:
Module 1: Introduction & Overview
The purpose of staff-family partnerships, main components of the Family Involvement in Care Intervention, and how training topics build on one another and overlap with the companion family training series are introduced and briefly reviewed.
Module 2: Understanding Changing Needs
Understanding the progressive loss of abilities that leads to changing care needs can help staff and family find the best approaches to support function and well-being, and avoid problematic behaviors.
Module 3: Role Changes for Family members
Placing upset feelings or demands in the context of family-role stress can help staff respond, not react to strong emotions, and work to identify and solve the “real” problem experienced by family.
Module 4: Interacting with Family Members
Ways to listen with the intent of understanding the other person’s “real” problem, staying calm, and knowing when to direct issues to a supervisor are essential skills for building staff-family relationships.
Module 5: Family-Staff Partnerships: First Steps
Using the Family Involvement in Care Intervention starts by orienting family members to staff-family partnerships and assessing the needs of both the family and their relative with dementia.
Module 6: Family-Staff Partnerships: Part 2
Negotiation of the partnership agreement is an essential step that helps staff and family develop mutually satisfying care plans that fit the needs of the person with dementia, family, and staff alike.
Module 7: Family-Staff Partnerships: Part 3
Conducting successful partnership agreement meetings is promoted by using basic ground rules and approaches, including when the agreement will be renegotiated, and how information will be gathered and shared.
Module 8: Person-Centered Care Overview
Understanding common characteristics of person-centered care can help staff caregivers identify and use approaches, practices, and routines that support being person-centered in daily care.
Module 9: Staying Person-Centered: Opportunities & Methods
Staying “person-first” in daily interactions and using family members as “guides” to behavior symptoms can help staff be person-centered, even when the person with dementia is not well known to the staff.
Module 11: Goal-Directed Care: Identifying & Using Values to Direct Care Decisions
Early discussions and information-sharing with family related to goals of care may reduce stress and crisis-based decisions, and advance “person-centered” care and treatment decisions.
Module 12: Hospice Approach to Dementia Care
The step-wise “hospice approach” to dementia care helps families plan ahead by discussing issues that are common in later-stage dementia and methods to best support their relative’s wishes.
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