Examples from the Partnerships in Dementia Care (PiDC) Alliance.
Dr. Sherry L. Dupuis, Dr. Carrie McAiney, Susan Brown, Dr. Jennifer Carson, Dr. Lorna de Witt, Dr. Darla Fortune, Sian Lockwood, Kimberly Lopez, Janet McKeown, Dr. Jenny Ploeg, Kristie Wiedenfeld.
On April 16th Dr. Dupuis presented a poster at the 30th International Conference Alzheimer's Disease International in Perth, Australia.
The poster shared learnings from our 4 year iterative culture change (CC) process, during which CC coalitions formed in 6 diverse long-term care (LTC) and community settings and actively integrated the voices of individuals with dementia, residents in LTC, family care partners, volunteers, and staff at all levels in decision-making.
In the poster, we shared examples of how our CC coalitions worked collaboratively to: (a) discover their positive core, (b) dream new possibilities for LTC, (c) design a plan for achieving desired aspirations, and (d) implement changes to transform their care settings.
Key enabling factors necessary for CC emerged from our work: adopting creative ways to engage persons with dementia, nurturing CC champions, building caring relationships, being supported by transformative leaders, celebrating accomplishments, and being flexible and responsive to the uniqueness of different settings.
By including relationship-centred concepts and practices (e.g., power sharing, responsibility, authenticity, accommodating one another) into the CC process, participants learned new ways of acting in a more life affirming and compassionate manner.
