Abstract
AbstractBackgroundOptimal care for families living with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders (ADRD) has the potential to improve their lives. However, ADRD care remains under-implemented among healthcare professionals, partly due to professionals’ limited ADRD training and inexperience. Professional training might help, but most training is in person, time-intensive, and does not focus on the potential of early detection, client empowerment, and cultural competency. We aimed to explore the acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of an online ADRD training, The Dementia Update Course, which addressed these issues. We hypothesized that the Dementia Update Course would lead to increased levels of perceived ADRD care competency among healthcare professionals.MethodsThis was a mixed-methods research design using pre-post training assessments. The training included 59 primary care providers (PCPs) and other healthcare professionals (e.g., medical specialists, nurses, social workers). The Dementia Update Course was a remote 6.5-hour training that included didactic lectures, case discussion techniques, and materials on ADRD detection and care. Outcomes included two 5-point Likert scales on acceptability, eleven on perceived dementia care competency, and the three subscales of the General Practitioners Confidence and Attitude Scale for Dementia. We used paired samples t-tests to assess the mean differences in all preliminary effectiveness outcomes.ResultsThe training included 18.0% of professionals that self-identified as non-White or Latino and 37.7% of professionals who served in rural areas. Most participants (90.0% and 87.5%) reported a high likelihood to recommend the training and high satisfaction respectively. All preliminary effectiveness outcomes analyzed in the total sample experienced a statistically significant improvement from pre- to post-training averaging 0.7 points in 1-5 scales (p<0.05). Most outcomes improved statistically among PCPs too.ConclusionsA relatively brief, remote, and inclusive ADRD training led to high levels of acceptability and improved perceived ADRD care competency among PCPs and other healthcare professionals. Future research should include a control group and assess guideline compliance, behavioral outcomes, and health outcomes among people with ADRD and their families.
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
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