Award Date: 2017

Project Lead(s): Claudia Mariano, Manager of Practice & Policy

Project Title: Comprehensive Dementia Assessment and Support for Dementia Patients in NPLCs

What is the issue? 

Many people in Ontario who are living with dementia do not currently have a family doctor and may access care through a Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinics. We identified the need for an assessment tool that nurse practitioners at these clinics can use to assess people with dementia to help them provide appropriate care.   

What did we do? 

We contracted Think Research to create the Comprehensive Dementia Assessment Tool. Learning from a two-week pilot study was incorporated into the final tool before it was rolled out to 25 Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinics across Ontario for testing over five weeks.  

What did we find?  

Fifty percent of nurse practitioners using the tool said that it helped them feel more confident when delivering care. It gave them a better understanding of dementia symptoms experienced by their clients over time and helped them provide better care. We learned that it was not possible to link to several electronic healthcare records databases, which limited our ability to roll the tool out to clinics across the province.