ESTATES & FACILITIES
Delivering ‘gold standard’ dementia-friendly care
Dennis Davison, service manager at the award-winning dementia unit at the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, explains how the facility is helping patients suffering from the disease.
dementia in Sunderland has been officially opened by the chair of the Alzheimer’s Society.
An
On 31 July, Dame Gill Morgan cut the ribbon at Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust’s (NTW) dementia centre at Monkwearmouth Hospital, which actually welcomed its first patients last November.
The £10m centre, built by Laing O’Rourke and designed by Medical Architecture, was planned in close consultation with service users, carers and staff. It also features the work of artist Dan Savage.
The new building, which includes individual en-suite rooms, communal areas, attractive courtyards with gardening activities, a putting green and occupational therapy rooms, has also become the first NHS building in the country to be awarded a gold design award from the Dementia Services Development Centre at the University of Stirling.
Memory triggers
It is a 24-bed centre made up of two wards: Roker for male patients and Mowbray for female patients. They replace two 12-bed wards currently located at Cherry Knowle Hospital.
A special feature in the new building is that it boasts a memory walk and vintage memorabilia, including sporting and lifestyle themed items, which help patients recall important memories.
Dennis Davison, service manager of the dementia unit at NTW, said: “We are starting to see the benefits of the building unfold and that the long design process has been worthwhile.
“This is not just with regards to the building, but how we can deliver care and how individualised it is. We can tailor-fit pathways and packages to
award-winning assessment and treatment unit for people with
the individuals because the building lends itself to that.”
The team has tried to make the building as dementia-friendly and safe as possible. For instance, taps have a standard fit – rather than motion or touch sensors – because people have to ‘recognise’, not just think about, what the tap is and how it works.
Davison also noted that there are memory boxes, which include personalised possessions, outside patient rooms so that when they are walking round the unit they can recognise their rooms.
“They may not recognise the room number, but do recognise the items, which we hope act as memory triggers,” said Davison. “This has been very important, and we do a lot of work to ensure the skills that people have are encouraged and maintained. Also, everybody has a digital screen in their bedroom which says today is, for example, Monday, so that people can recognise time and place. It is something that we cannot emphasise enough in order to ensure people can recognise people in their family and to be able to encourage independent memories.”
High-quality care
The building and its staff also work closely with community services, including the Memory Protection Service, to form a specialist centre for people with dementia in Sunderland and South Tyneside.
Since opening up in November 2013, the two wards have supported more than 70 patients, which includes the assessment and treatment of need and either supporting the person to return home or to alternative accommodation that meets their needs.
In addition to this, staff are reporting fewer
falls and a reduction in the number of recorded incidents. Patients are experiencing better sleeping patterns and there has been a reduction in anti-psychotic medication, perhaps attributable to the improved environment and the increased social activities which are now available.
Davison added that when someone comes to the facility a formulation-based approach is used to understand the patient. This looks at every aspect of the individual from the personal, medical, behavioural and neurological standpoints.
“Whether it is the nurses, doctors, psycholo- gists, or whoever,” he said, “we pull all this data together to understand how we can deliver care around the ‘6 Cs’ for the individual. It is also important for us to be able to do this, and map it out into care plans and responses to support nurses, families and future carers.”
NTW has noted that as well as the huge improvements in patient experience, a positive impact on staff morale and wellbeing is being reported, with reduced staff sickness and staff turnover.
Davison added that the building is something the trust is very proud of, and that the staff are constantly reviewing the care they deliver in order to meet the best standards.
“For us to get the design award was the icing on the cake and we were so proud, especially for the staff teams who worked on the model and plans,” he said. “It also highlighted that the care we deliver meets that gold standard.”
Dennis Davison
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national health executive Sep/Oct 14 | 39
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