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Funded by the Baycrest-led Centre for Aging +
Brain Health Innovation's (CABHI) Spark Program
- which supports the development and testing of
promising early-stage innovations in seniors' care
by point of care staff - Hartung's workshop aims to
introduce students to the realities of dementia care
as early as possible in their education. The workshop
covers common behaviours of dementia patients,
frameworks for responding to those behaviours,
and simulated case scenarios to implement new
knowledge-taking theory and connecting it to
practice in a more cohesive way.
The workshop ran in September 2018 at Baycrest,
where Hartung presented to 43 first-year nursing
students. He collected survey evaluations from the
students before, directly following, and nine weeks
after the workshop. The results are being used to
measure the workshop's efficacy.
"At times it seems daunting to operationalize any of
our great ideas, but a good idea can go very far here
at Baycrest. I've been really fortunate to work with
CABHI, which helped make my project possible,"
Hartung says.
On top of the funding, CABHI supported the
project by partnering Hartung with Baycrest's
Kunin-Lunenfeld Centre for Applied Research
and Evaluation (KL-CARE), which is assisting
with analysis and reporting results. Hartung also
collaborated with Mary Akuamoah-Boateng, student
coordinator with Baycrest's Academic Education and
Interprofessional Education department, and Lisa
Sokoloff from the Training and Simulation division
at Baycrest's Centre for Education and Knowledge
Exchange in Aging.
In the future Hartung would like to make the
workshop accessible not only to more students
and staff at Baycrest, but to students across the
province or even the country, as an e-learning
module.
Visit baycrest.org to learn more about nursing.
