Belvedere Aged Care & Alzheimer’s Australia Education Partnership
- 07/07/2014
- News,Research & Innovation
On the 8th May 2014, Belvedere’s Management Committee had the privilege of attending the “Virtual Dementia Experience” at Alzheimers Australia. The Perc Walkley Dementia Learning Centre is a key feature of Alzheimers’ Australia new facility in Parkville.
The training centre features doughnut shaped mood lighting, a 10 metre by 2 metre projection wall, an interactive touch screen and gesture-sensor technology. It allows participants to be immersed in the virtual world of someone with dementia and experience the cognitive and perceptual difficulties they may face in their daily life that can make ordinary tasks challenging and dangerous.
The Avatar-like technology is based on input from Alzheimers’ Australia, people working in the aged care sector and researchers from Monash University as well as software developer Opaque Multimedia’s own research on the stages of dementia. The new Parkville facility showcases dementia friendly design features with the intention of educating staff and providers on dementia friendly spaces.
The visit at Parkville was the beginning of this wonderful journey Belvedere is embarking upon with Alzheimer’s Australia. We are proud to announce that we have established a partnership together to develop and implement a person centred model of Dementia Care.
We look forward to Belvedere staff going to the Parkville centre and experiencing the Virtual Dementia Experience. The model will provide the foundation for Dementia practice to be delivered throughout the facility. The partnership aims to support ongoing and sustainable practice improvement within the facility. This will be achieved by developing the leadership skills of a multi-disciplinary leadership team.
Alzheimer’s Australia will work with a team of staff to identify, plan and implement practical project designed to enhance person-centred practice within the facility. During the process members of the leadership team will gain experience listening and responding to feedback from key stakeholder groups, identifying and using evidence, develop teamwork skills, planning and managing projects, measuring outcomes and learning from the experience.
The Alzheimer’s Association plan consist of three main parts:
Part 1 – Planning the Practice Improvement Process
- Consultation with stakeholders to identify what is important to them regarding the model of care, the service provided and their relationship with the facility
- Undertaking surveys
- Establish a baseline assessment of current person-centred practice
- Confirmation of a membership of the multi-disciplinary leadership team
- Developing the model of care
- Identifying opportunities for practice improvement based on the model of care
- Planning implementation and evaluation of projects.
Part 2 – Implementing the Practice Improvement Projects
- Identify the impact of current organizational policies and procedures on the implementation of projects
- Identifying opportunities for learning for individuals and for the organisation during the implementation phase.
Part 3 – Evaluation of Project Outcomes
- Use of the quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the outcomes of the projects compared with baseline measures.
- Identifying ways to incorporate key learning into the facility’s systems and strategies.
At this stage we have appointed Nazia Yasmin and Analyn Diongco who are looking forward to forming the leadership team. The education opportunities and implementation of this amazing program is an exciting project at Belvedere.