Establishing authentic partnerships with people living with dementia as educators within the university curriculum

Hedd Jones, Catrin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9753-0777, Roberts, J., Caulfields, M., Davies-Abbott, I. and Windle, G. (2023) Establishing authentic partnerships with people living with dementia as educators within the university curriculum. In: The 33rd Alzheimer Europe conference "New opportunities in dementia care, policy and research", 16 to 18 October 2023, Helsinki, Finland. ISSN POS2. New opportunities in policy - Valo-Säde-Kajo, 17/10/2023, 10:00 - 15:45 (Unpublished)

Abstract

The biomedical narrative of dementia has traditionally been one of loss and decline. This is reinforced by media narratives such as the Tsunami of dementia. The voices of people living with dementia have been absent from such portrayals and within higher education programmes. Health students need to feel confident whilst on placement, seeing the person first before any diagnosis. Involving the public in research and teaching is encouraged by commissioners. This requires authentic partnerships to ensure that the content meets the requirements of the curriculum, helps to develop students understanding, and supports people to share their experiences. The North Wales dementia network was established to improve social learning and collaboration across the health, social care, and academics working to improve support for people living with dementia. A range of expertise has been integral to the network meetings including professional and personal experiences. Initial face-to-face meetings developed into an online regional group and two conferences which were co-produced and planned with people living with dementia. Experts by experience have been supported to share their views and experiences since 2017 within the pre-registration nursing and medicine degrees in addition to extensive involvement within the teaching of the masters in dementia programmes and consulting on the design of new research. The members living with dementia also established a dementia engagement and empowerment project group called Caban supporting students and staff to lead work on the first University in Wales to work towards becoming dementia friendly organisation. The process of embedding personal experiences within health programmes will be shared with feedback from students, educators, and people delivering the sessions. This work could be replicated within other higher education institutions to challenge stigma and inform dementia education and research.

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