Key Findings

The key findings from the project included:

• The evaluation questionnaires indicated that the course was very well received. Across seven cohorts and over 100 participants, every participant rated the course as being very or extremely valuable overall and indicated that they would recommend the course to others.
• Themes in the students’ written feedback included an increase in knowledge, skills, and ideas, particularly for behaviours that challenge, alongside strong themes of person-centred insights in understanding the individual, their history, needs, and reason for behaviours.
• Ratings of the self-perceived impact of the course are available for 67 participants from the four most recent cohorts. Participants rated the course highly in the extent to which it improved their skills in working with people with dementia, their enjoyment and understanding of their job, and their understanding of dementia.
• Carers who completed the Approaches to Dementia Questionnaire showed a significant improvement in positive attitude and person-centred attitude.
• The participants’ clinical manager was asked to complete a confidential rating of the students’ person-centred care behaviour using part of the Person-Directed Dementia Care Assessment Tool (State of Wisconsin, 2006). There was a significant improvement in the managers’ ratings of the person-centredness of the care provided post-course versus pre-course.

Key Recommendations

The key recommendations from the project included:

Current research | The Health Board is currently introducing a six-month follow-up to assess whether change is sustained, a scale to measure positive experiences of the care role, and a clinical scenario to assess preferred care approaches.

Looking to the future | Our experience suggests that it is possible to design and deliver an effective and enjoyable programme based on adult learning principles that engages both hearts and minds.

Challenges for the future | The success of ‘Walking in Another’s Shoes’ brings a number of challenges for the future as the programme extends to different groups and regions. As the programme rolls out via the South Island Regional Dementia Initiative, content fidelity is supported by the collation of trainer manuals and interactive CDs of lectures. One fundamental question is how much of the success of ‘Walking in Another’s Shoes’ is attributable to the outstanding programme facilitator rather than the teaching package itself, and how this can be carried over to new generations of the programme.

Training the trainer | To ensure a facilitation style that embodies the vision of the programme, a ‘train the trainer’ approach with ongoing mentoring is being used.

Supporting the change in the person-centred approach | Another fundamental question is around how to encourage the organisational culture and leadership needed to support the change in person-centred approach that ‘Walking in Another’s Shoes’ inspires in individuals.

Complementary initiatives | The project team are exploring complementary initiatives, for example, introducing group brainstorming sessions to encourage appreciative inquiry at a facility level or person-centred leadership training.