An Education Intervention to Enhance Staff Self-Efficacy to Provide Dementia Care in an Acute Care Hospital in Canada

Abstract

Education is needed for enhanced capacity of acute hospitals to provide dementia care. A nonrandomized controlled, repeated-measures design was used to evaluate a dementia education program delivered to an intervention group (IG, n = 468), compared to a wait-listed group (n = 277), representing separate sites of a multisite hospital. Participants completed self-efficacy for dementia and satisfaction measures and provided written descriptions of dementia care collected at baseline, postintervention (IG only), and at 8-week follow-up. Oral narratives were gathered from IG participants 8 weeks postintervention. The IG demonstrated significant improvement in self-efficacy scores from baseline to immediately postintervention ( P < .001), sustained at 8 weeks. There were no changes from baseline to 8 weeks postintervention evident in the wait-listed group ( P = .21). Intervention group participants described positive impacts including implementation of person-centered care approaches. Implementation of dementia care education programs throughout hospital settings is promising for the enhancement of dementia care.