Dissemination and implementation of strategy adoption guidelines for persons with dementia at risk of getting lost

To address risks associated with critical dementia-related wandering, three guidelines were developed for use by persons living with dementia, their care partners, and professional staff, to choose wander-management strategies. This evidence-based research incorporates knowledge mobilization approaches that directly involve the three types of stakeholders in using the guidelines in the real world. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the knowledge translation of three guidelines on wander-management strategies, and to further deploy these guidelines to organizations across Canada.

Steering committees across Canada were established for consultation. Guidelines were then shared among these organizations via Google slides. Health professionals, caregivers, community organizations and persons living with dementia completed an online survey (via Google) or paper-based survey to provide feedback on the guidelines. The guidelines were then translated from English to French using a forward-translation method.

The guidelines were adopted across ten organizations in four Canadian provinces. Adoption included introduction and formal training to staff. It took 22 months from the development of the guidelines to the dissemination and launch of the guidelines to the organizations. Participants (n = 73) were very satisfied with the developed guidelines and agreed they were easy to navigate, easy to understand, and the information provided was useful.

A stakeholder-driven approach used for guideline development and dissemination were successful methods for minimizing the time for this work to become practice. This in addition to the use of online platforms can replace conventional methods which take longer and become quickly outdated.