339707
Reducing Safety Risk among Diverse Caregivers with the Alzheimer’s Home Safety Pilot Program
Methods: This memory clinic-based pilot study included a pre-/post-test survey design. The intervention included a safety training intervention for caregivers. Of 440 patients that visited the memory clinic over an 18-month period, about 264 (60%) of the patients visiting the clinic indicated some safety risk based on an initial assessment. From this pool of patients a neuropsychiatrist conducted an in-depth examination and referred 60 (23%) unique caregiver-care recipient dyads to the safety training intervention. Of these 60, 47 (78%) completed both pre- and post-test interview. Of these 47, 32 (68%) completed the full intervention (attended or participated in two training sessions), 8 (17%) partially completed and 7 (15%) did not attend any session.
Results: Among frequency items, statistically significant results included caregivers self-reporting that AD patients went outdoors (F(2,42)=5.13; p<.01) and got lost less often (F(2,43)=3.57; p<.05). As a result of this study, a substantial number of instances occurred in which caregiver participants self-reported AD patients to be completely safe in one or more of the safety risk areas after the intervention.
Conclusions: The safety reduction program succeeded in having both statistically and clinically significant results in reducing safety risks among an otherwise hard-to-reach, underserved target population of minority, mostly Spanish speaking caregivers.
Learning Areas:
Chronic disease management and preventionConduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Diversity and culture
Occupational health and safety
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Learning Objectives:
Describe the benefits of focused versus comprehensive safety training programs.
Describe unique and general safety issues for elders living with dementia.
Identify lessons learned from working with a hard to reach, urban population.
Explain the various measures of safety risk reduction.
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been doing research in the area of caregiving and dementia for over 15 years. Specifically, I have received numerous grants to study how to develop, test, train, and evaluate communication training programs for caregivers.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.