In 2018, the University of Southern Indiana’s Center for Healthy Aging and Wellness received a $789,800 grant from the Indiana State Department of Health to fund dementia care training for nursing home staff members in Indiana. The project, Building a Dementia-Competent Nursing Home Workforce with Positive Approach® to Care, was a collaboration with Teepa Snow to improve the lives of people living with dementia and transform the culture of dementia care. Teepa Snow is an occupational therapist from North Carolina who developed the Positive Approach® to Care (PAC) training model to support a skills-based approach to dementia education. The project focused on nursing home staff with three goals:
The Building a Dementia-Competent Nursing Home Workforce with Positive Approach® to Care project allowed Indiana to build a foundation of education and skill-building to provide a model of care for people living with dementia in nursing homes.
USI has had a long partnership with Snow in the area of dementia care, including a previous project funded by the Indiana State Department of Health in 2016 involving 12 nursing homes in southwest Indiana. Efficacy of knowledge gained and perceptions changed among nursing home staff members involved with the project is reported in the Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions.* A USI-led research team worked with Positive Approach to Care to write the manuscript.
* USI faculty can view the article, Health Workers' Knowledge and Perceptions on Dementia in Skilled Nursing Homes: A Pilot Implementation of Teepa Snow's Positive Approach to Care Certification Course, via the Rice Library, with this link.
