Dementia Care Research and Psychosocial Factors

Area of Science:

• Geriatric Medicine
• Mental Health
• Knowledge Translation

Background:

• Launched in March 2024, the Canadian Coalition for Seniors Mental Health (CCSMH) introduced Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) for the Assessment and Management of Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD).
• A nine-month dissemination strategy aimed to increase awareness and understanding of the CPG among healthcare providers.
• The primary objective was to present and evaluate the effectiveness of these dissemination strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the reach and impact of various dissemination strategies for the CCSMH Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) on BPSD.
• To assess the effectiveness of tailored knowledge translation approaches in enhancing healthcare provider application of CPG recommendations.
• To gather participant feedback for optimizing future implementation strategies.

Main Methods:

• Employed a three-pronged knowledge translation approach: diffusion (social media, website, press releases), dissemination (conferences, webinars, publications), and application (education, training).
• Strategies were implemented in both English and French to maximize reach across Canada.
• Evaluation involved measuring cumulative reach and synthesizing participant feedback.

Main Results:

• Diffusion activities reached approximately 29,481 individuals, with over 7,800 CPG downloads from the CCSMH website.
• Dissemination efforts, including webinars and conferences, reached over 12,100 participants, alongside open-access publications.
• Application strategies, such as Project ECHO and grand rounds, engaged over 500 participants, contributing to a total reach of approximately 42,200 individuals.

Conclusions:

• Feedback indicated a need for scalable implementation tools, including bilingual electronic and print clinical summaries.
• Tailored dissemination strategies are vital for engaging healthcare providers through their preferred channels for information seeking and learning.
• Effective CPG dissemination accelerates the translation of research evidence into actionable clinical recommendations for BPSD management.