Practical Dementia Resources: A platform for peer-to-peer shared learning

Motivation and context for the project

The National Dementia Strategy for Scotland, “Everyone’s Story” (Scottish Government, 2023) sets out a positive shared vision for dementia that embraces a person-centred approach to providing support, treatment and care, where it is needed. The subsequent delivery plan (Scottish Government, 2024) outlines how Scotland begins to achieve this vision over the next two years. Both contain a clear message that to achieve positive outcomes for people living with dementia, working in partnership to support the development of the workforce, is the best approach. Moreover, recent dementia guidelines (Healthcare Improvement Scotland, 2023) identified the necessity of psychosocial interventions as a first line approach to care for people with dementia.  

Despite the numerous books, training materials and courses available that describe high level non-pharmacological approaches to stress and distress situations in dementia care, practical implementation of these approaches continues to be a challenge. This is never more obvious, or a solution more relevant, than in today’s stretched and complex health and social care system.

The aim of the Practical Dementia Resources (PDR) project is to close that implementation gap. By co-designing and co-developing an online platform the PDR aims to provide shared learning for care staff, taking a non-pharmacological approach to improving dementia care and reduce inappropriate use of psychoactive medicines. This non-pharmacological approach may involve consideration of potential unmet communication needs for people with dementia (such as in the case study below). It may also enable wider tweaks to the care home system, such as how it communicates with prescribers any changes in residents’ condition or concerns about medicines. This approach also aligns with the Scottish Approach to Service Design (Scottish Government, 2019).

A central ethos of the approach is ‘All teach, All learn’; a believe that no one person has all the answers, and we can all learn from each other. Furthermore, while some care providers have dementia support infrastructures that staff can call upon, this is not the case for many providers.

The work was also promoted at four conferences over the last year – UK Dementia Congress, Alzheimer’s Scotland and two Scottish Care conferences (for care homes and care at home respectively). 

Perhaps not surprisingly, a broad content of information was asked for, but staff were clear that access to the material should be quick and easily accessible by all. Many identified the need for the information to be hosted on a freely accessible digital platform. This was particularly important to care at home staff who were keen for something that would appear in a user-friendly manner on their mobile devices. Many highlighted the need to learn from their peers, those with lived experience of dementia, and from those who regulate their services. They identified that the learning they most often recall is that to which they can relate, and which evokes an emotional response in them. They were keen for content to be short (due to time pressures), and in a variety of formats (e.g. podcast clips, animations, video, plain language for text) as this would help others to understand the lessons being shared.   

The scoping phase of this project also identified the Right Decision Service platform, supported by NHS Scotland (https://rightdecisions.scot.nhs.uk/), as the site for the resources and a small grant was secured to develop the platform with frontline staff. A multi-professional, multi-agency advisory group with wide representation from the sector, including frontline care staff and people with lived experience, has been set up to steer development.  

Lessons learned and implications for practice

The purpose of the online PDR is to complement dementia training that staff receive and to act as an additional peer-to-peer learning resource.

Equity of access will be supported by having a central platform that is freely accessible from mobile devices, as well as other formats, and without the need to register and requirement to remember passwords.  

Having this resource available digitally offers users an opportunity to repeatedly access at a time that best suits. The short, bite-sized, emotionally resonant sections will fit in with most time constraints.

Using the co-production approach to service design has clearly shown that the staff know what they need to support them and their peers, now and in the future, and the desire to share their knowledge.

The feedback from those attending the workshops and interactive session has been extremely positive. Many were very grateful for being given the time to actively listen and engage them and, “the opportunity to influence our future and that of the people we support”. Staff felt the shared learning platform would not only reduce stress and distress, and the use of sedative psychoactive medicines, but positively impact the lives of frontline staff and care partners as well. Staff also commented positively on working collaboratively with the Care Inspectorate on this project.