The development and use of the assessment of dementia awareness and person-centred care training tool in long-term care

Policy and practice guidelines recommend person-centred care to support people to live well with dementia in long-term care. Therefore, staff working in long-term care settings need to be trained in dementia awareness and person-centred care. However, the access to, content of and reach of training across long-term care settings can be varied. Data on current and ongoing access to person-centred care training can form an important component of data gathered on usual care in research studies, in particular clinical trials within long-term care. However, no suitable assessment tools are available to measure dementia awareness and person-centred care training availability, content and reach. This paper describes the development of a training audit tool to meet this need for a usual care measure of dementia awareness and person-centred care training. The ‘Assessment of Dementia Awareness and Person-centred care Training’ tool was based on a review of published person-centred care literature and consultation with dementia and aged care experts. The Assessment of Dementia Awareness and Person-centred care Training tool was piloted in 13 long-term care facilities the UK and Australia, before being used to assess the content of dementia and person-centred care awareness training in 50 UK settings in a randomized controlled trial as part of usual care recording. Following pilot testing, modifications to the Assessment of Dementia Awareness and Person-centred care Training tool’s wording were made to enhance item clarity. When implemented in the randomized controlled trial, pre-baseline training assessment data showed that the Assessment of Dementia Awareness and Person-centred care Training tool was able to differentiate between the training in different long-term care settings and identify settings where further dementia awareness training was required. The Assessment of Dementia Awareness and Person-centred care Training tool was then used as a method of recording data on dementia awareness and person-centred care training as part of ongoing usual care data collection. The Assessment of Dementia Awareness and Person-centred care Training tool is suitable for use by researchers to establish the availability, content and reach of dementia and person-centred care awareness training to staff within research studies.