Authors (including presenting author) :
LAU CC (1), CHEUK HY(2), KAM KW(2)
Affiliation :
(1) Division of Geriatrics, Department of Medicine & Geriatrics (2) Patient Resources Centre
Introduction :
COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on patients with dementia and their caregivers. Social distancing, self-isolation, or limited provision of social services have obviously affected the daily routine of patients concerned and increased caregivers’ burden. Some literatures found that such drastic shift in patients’ lives worsened their cognitive and functional status. The rapid rise of severe cases, disability numbers, and institutionalizations could be expected if neglecting this situation. To this end, Department of M&G and Patient Resources Centre worked collaboratively with community partners (NGOs, University and Patient Group) to launch a technology-based intervention project for bridging this gap.
Objectives :
The project targeted caregivers, staff and volunteers involved in providing care or support to patients with dementia. It aimed to improve at-home care of patients and attenuate caregivers’ stress through: - organizing a series of online seminars for skills and knowledge sharing to facilitate at-home care - consolidating resource kit (both community and online resources) for empowering caregivers
Methodology :
1. Planning and preparation Stage - Discussion and preparation of online seminars, resource kit and other issues (e.g. recruitment). - Involvement of NGOs and university to educate caregivers on using online meeting software “ZOOM”. 2. Implementation Stage - Four sessions of online seminar series were organized for introducing useful community and online resources, home-based training & activities for patients, tips for attenuating caregivers’ stress as well as sharing from caregivers. - Resource kits were shared with participants for providing self-guidance information of at-home care. 3. Evaluation Stage - Through collecting satisfaction survey from participants and feedback from community partners.
Result & Outcome :
COVID-19 has speeding up people’s acceptance to technology which maintains their connection with the outside world. Although there are some limitations (e.g. knowledge and familiarity of patients and caregivers with these modern technologies) as well as ethical and privacy concerns, this is a realistic and cost-effective approach for providing high quality of services with minimal costs. This project served 370 participants (Caregivers:40%, Staff: 37%, Volunteers: 23%) with over 1300 attendances. All respondents viewed that online seminars and resource kits were practical and useful. Some staff from both HA and NGOs expressed that this project was comprehensive and they would share the resource kits with caregivers. Participants proposed organizing similar project regularly.
