Published on 21 May 2019
Targeting healthcare students before they enter professional practice could be the key to increasing high-quality care and greater understanding for dementia patients, research has revealed during national Dementia Action Week (May 20-26) 2019.
With the current ageing population, dementia is becoming more prevalent in the UK, with one in 14 people over the age of 65 thought to have the condition. As numbers are expected to rise, so are the interactions with healthcare professionals, but research by Alzheimer’s Society discovered that practitioners were poorly prepared to care for patients living with dementia. A national strategy by the Department for Heath is also underway to ensure better knowledge about dementia and remove the stigma that still surrounds it.
At Sunderland, pharmacy graduate Emma Boxer’s research suggests educating at undergraduate level for healthcare students by incorporating Dementia Friends’ information sessions as part of their training, would increase their knowledge of the condition and prepare them to interact with this patient group in practice.
Alzheimer’s Society’s Dementia Friends programme is the biggest ever initiative to change people’s perceptions of dementia. It aims to transform the way the nation thinks, acts and talks about the condition.
Emma’s research was prompted after becoming a Dementia Friends’ Champion herself and hosting a series of successful awareness presentations on campus to pharmacy, public health, adult nursing and mental health nursing students. Following the session she asked students to complete a quantative survey to find out if their knowledge and understanding of dementia has improved and whether they felt it would benefit them and their patients moving into practice.
“The results were certainly enlightening and highlighted a significant increase in students’ knowledge surrounding dementia after the session,” explained Emma, 24.
“The levels of satisfaction and enjoyment of the session showed high scores with many strongly agreeing that there was indeed a gap in this area. Significantly 91.5 per cent of students agreed that the session should be offered more to undergraduates amongst healthcare courses.”
She added: “We concluded that Dementia Friends’ training has a place and improves knowledge across a range of healthcare courses. The results demonstrate that education could be used to improve dementia-friendly healthcare professionals. This also shows the importance and success of the Dementia Friends’ session, as in only a short time period there was such a significant change in student knowledge.”
Emma, from Washington, who graduated in July 2018, is an academic pre-registration pharmacist, spending her week split between a community pharmacy, Burdons in Whickham, Gateshead, and working as an academic tutor in the University of Sunderland’s Sciences Complex. She became a Dementia Friends’ Champion after sitting in on a dementia session in the final year of her course.