Palliative Care for Advanced Dementia Training Program and Evaluation
The Palliative Care for Advanced Dementia: Adopting the Practice of Comfort article describes the creation of the Beatitudes Campus palliative care for advanced dementia program, which the Beatitudes Campus continuing care retirement community (CCRC) developed with a hospice provider and a foundation after finding the state of the art in caring for people with advanced dementia unsatisfacotry.
The program offers a person-directed approach that:
- Focuses on the person’s comfort at all times.
- Incorporates each person’s life story into his or her care plan.
- Creates a homelike environment individualized as much as possible for each resident.
- Anticipates each person’s needs rather than only responding to discomfort or negative behaviors.
- Empowers frontline caregivers to do whatever is needed to make residents comfortable.
Staff members learn best practices in dementia care and are empowered to endorse and enact the best care measures to meet the needs of the individual. Quality improvement measures are implemented to benchmark progress.