Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Research to understand and improve experiences of general hospital outpatient care for people living with dementia and their families/supporters.
Most people living with dementia (around 90%) have one or more additional health conditions. This includes a range of physical health conditions or needs, such as fractures, heart disease, eye problems, diabetes or kidney disease. As a result, people living with dementia are regular users of hospital outpatient services for physical health conditions. This makes it important that these departments and their staff are well prepared to meet their needs.
Despite how often people living with dementia use hospital outpatient services, very little research has looked at their experiences of doing so. Studies that do suggest they can experience many challenges, including difficulties accessing, understanding and making decisions about their care. These studies generally take place in one outpatient department only. There is no guidance available to help staff when they are supporting someone with dementia to use outpatient services. All existing guidance for hospitals is based on supporting people on inpatient wards, which are very different from outpatient services.
STAGE 1 will use interviews and observations with people living with dementia, their families/supporters and hospital staff. The interviews and observations will take place in six outpatient departments in two NHS Trusts. They will explore experiences of outpatient care for people living with dementia, including what works well and any ways care could be improved. Alongside this, a review of existing research on improving inpatient care for people with dementia will also take place.
STAGE 2 will involve workshops with people with dementia, their families/supporters and hospital staff. The findings from stage 1 will be shared with people at the workshops. They will then be asked for their ideas on how outpatient care could be improved for people with dementia. These ideas will be turned into a toolkit for improving care.
Two NHS outpatient departments will try out the toolkit to see how well it works in practice and whether any changes are needed. This will be done using interviews and observations with people with dementia, their families/supporters and staff in each department.
The findings from Stage 2 will be discussed in a final workshop. People at the workshop will help to agree any changes needed to the toolkit and to develop recommendations for improving outpatient care for people living with dementia.
Chief Investigators: Dr Rachael Kelley and Professor Claire Surr
Leeds Beckett Investigators: Dr Nicky Taylor, Dr Andrew Papworth, Dr Anne-Marie Bagnall
Funder: National Institute for Health and Care Research, Research for Patient Benefit Funding Programme (RfPB)
Funding amount: £253,635
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