This was originally blogged here by Dr Rowan Harwood on the British Geriatric Society's blog. The original blog also contains an excellent video on the BMJ website, which can be accessed here.
There is a lot of criticism of how we manage cognitively impaired patients in acute hospitals. And advice on how to do it better. The hope has been that more expert and co-ordinated services would improve outcomes and save resources. But there has been little in the way of rigorous evaluation.
We developed a specialist medical and mental health unit with the ambitious objective of demonstrating best practice. We enhanced the ward environment, ward staffing and skill mix, including mental health specialist nurses, therapists and psychiatry, trained all staff to a high level in the person centred philosophy of care, and endeavoured to engage family carers more fully.
After 18 months of operation we ran a randomised controlled trial, published in the BMJ. This video abstract describes the intervention and trial results.To illustrate the challenges and capture the essence of compassionate person-centred care, we made a 23 minute documentary, called Today is Monday. Footage from this is used to illustrate the abstract.
The full 23-minute film is available for training purposes; interested readers are welcome to discuss this with me
Dr Harwood is a consultant physician, professor of geriatric medicine at Nottingham University Hospital NHS Trust.