Abstract
Introduction There are 400 thousand people living with dementia (PLWD) in Egypt. Most of the care for PLWD is delivered by family members. Healthcare Professionals (HCP) supporting these families need adequate training. Involving HCP in designing and producing training material ensures sustainability of these educational resources as their content will be socially and culturally relevant. Methods The first part of the project involved the lead author (OM) meeting with 2 geriatricians to identify common challenging situations in dementia. A short video for training HCP in dementia using these situations was produced, based on OM lived experience, and then shared with 2 old-age psychiatrists for comments. Feedback on the video was subsequently obtained via semi-structured interviews with 16 HCP (2 doctors, 1 nurse, 1 dietitian, 1 communication therapist, 2 social workers, and 9 clinical psychologists) either in person (3), over the phone (1), or virtually (12) approached in two institutions for ageing in Cairo and Alexandria in 2021. The video was finally checked by an adult psychiatrist for consistency with non-violent communication approaches. All interviews were analysed using a thematic framework. Comments and feedback were used to co-produce a final version of the video. Results From the initial co-design phase, six frequently-encountered situations were identified: anger, low mood, wandering, repetitive behaviour, refusing support with activities of daily living, and sleep disturbance. Five key qualities for appropriate response in these situations were agreed on: kindness, sensitivity, compassion, avoiding confrontation, and shared-decision making in activities of daily living. The subsequent co-production phase with 19 HCP resulted in an 18-minute: 43-seconds simulation video of six challenging interactions between PLWD and their carers. The video is now freely available on YouTube, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ylINBXZwH8M&feature=youtu.be Conclusions Involving healthcare professionals in dementia in co-creating a video for training their peers led to a freely available online educational resource.
Comments
Feedback
Well done for putting in the effort and hard work to produce this helpful video for HCP.
A good attempt was made to consult a variety of HCP that look after PLWD
Nice write up explaining how the process was done
You may wish to consider involving carers usally family members as you mentioned in coproducing the next version of your video. Carers are experts and have devised their own ways(right or wrong) in tackling the issues identified. It would be helpful to get their perspective as some would be helpful and for the techniques that they use that may not be,it would be an opportunity to respectfully educate them and suggest a better way.
You may wish to look at the literature on co production/co designing which is rich and it does recommend involving the people with the condition as well as their carers.
Well done and thank you for sharing your work with us.