Palliative Care

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Finding Comfort Living with Advanced Dementia in Residential Care

CaringKind's Palliative Care for Advanced Dementia: Training and Implementation, addresses the need for improving the quality-of-life and care for residents diagnosed with advanced dementia who live in nursing homes, through a program that generates the special adaptations needed to make palliative care more effective for persons with advanced dementia and their families.

We are addressing this problem through a pilot project focused on the implementation of improved practices on the pilot units in our three partner nursing homes, and the organizational adaptations needed to implement and sustain these practices throughout each of the partner homes. Our program is based on the practice of a comfort-focused care approach, rather than the more traditional medical model of care, and is based on a ground-breaking program developed by Beatitudes Campus (our partner) and their partner, Hospice of the Valley, in Phoenix, Arizona. They have invested considerable research and training into expanding knowledge and practice in the area of institutionally-based care for people with late-stage dementia. The project aims to adapt their care model to urban, culturally diverse settings, and will be the first of its kind in NYC. Included in this effort is an extensive evaluation and cost-study.

For this project we are working with three nursing homes and the three hospices with whom they contract, to develop model residential care programs in palliative care for people with late stage dementia.

Our partners are:

• Cobble Hill Health Center, Inc., Brooklyn;
• Isabella Geriatric Center, NYC
• Jewish Home Lifecare, NYC
• VNSNY Hospice & Palliative Care, Inc.
• Metropolitan Jewish Hospice & Palliative Care, NYC
• Calvary Hospice.

For more information about this project, contact: Ann Wyatt at (646) 744-2963 or AWyatt@caringkindnyc.org.