Promoting person-centred care for older people

Older people, across the spectrum of life, experience socio-demographic changes (United Nations (UN) 2019) that easily hinder the capacity of health and social care practitioners to promote person-centred care within this group. The changes associated with ageing are compounded by the ageism that pervades the everyday life of older people (World Health Organization (WHO) 2020). The authors of this chapter are passionate advocates of practice development (PD) as a strategy to enable older people to experience person-centred health and social care. The purpose of this chapter is to share three case studies demonstrating the promotion of person-centred care for people with dementia in Taiwan, Germany and Australia. The case studies demonstrate interdisciplinary implementation of PD projects by practitioners in medicine, nursing and occupational therapy in community and nursing home care settings. Due to their complex needs, older people are the highest users of health and social care services and effective interdisciplinary teamworking is therefore more crucial than it is in any other population group (Kirst et al. 2017). Only by understanding the complex needs of older people, from an interdisciplinary perspective, can practitioners provide person-centred health and social care services. In addition, genuine understanding can be achieved only by working in partnership with older people and their family carers. PD is ideally placed to provide a strategy for health and social care practitioners to achieve these goals. This is never truer than it is for people with dementia, who so often experience discrimination and are excluded from decisions about their care (Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) 2019). Our case studies demonstrate how the care of people with dementia can be improved through the implementation of PD strategies. In the UK, there are many examples of effectively implementing PD to improve the care of older people. This might not be surprising given that PD grew in the UK in the 1990s (Bradd et al. 2017) from roots wholly grounded in gerontological nursing. In other countries there are fewer examples of using PD with older people, so the aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how PD can be successfully implemented to promote person-centred care practices for older people, in particular people with dementia, in three contrasting healthcare systems. The contribution of PD in the care of older people has never been so important for providing support and guidance to practitioners and policymakers tackling what is no longer a ‘future’ ageing population trend (United Nations (UN) 2019).