Improving Activity and Engagement for Patients with Dementia

This is the second in a short series that presents case study examples of the positive work achieved by trusts that participated in the Royal College of Nursing’s development programme to improve dementia care in acute hospitals. Staff often think that there is insufficient time to get to know patients and carers, especially with large and challenging workloads. Combined with a lack of activities and stimulation for patients with dementia in hospital, this can result in poor engagement and a disconnect between staff and patients. To improve these relationships and give staff more time with patients, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has introduced bay nursing for patients with dementia, where one nurse is responsible for monitoring a bay alongside a healthcare assistant for an entire shift. Part of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, Glan Clwyd Hospital in North Wales has focused on improving stimulation by creating an activity room with a specially trained activity worker, providing a relaxed and friendly setting where patients with dementia can take part in a range of activities and have lunch together.

Bridging the Divide in Work and Occupational Psychology: Evidence From Practice

This study explores the extent to which work and organizational (W&O) psychology practitioners use evidence, how they apply it to the everyday contexts in which they work and the types of barriers they encounter in so doing. It adopts a mixed methods approach involving the administration of a survey to a UK sample (N=163) of W&O psychologists and a series of semi-structured interviews (N=25) exploring in greater depth how evidence is applied in practice. Findings reveal that practitioners consult a wide range of different types of evidence which they employ at various stages of engagement with client organisations and that this evidence is pressed into service in the pursuit of solutions which are both acceptable from the client perspective and consistent with the scientific standards underpinning professional knowledge and expertise in W&O psychology. Barriers to evidence-use were mainly practical in nature, concerning issues around managing the client-consultant relationship and the particularities of implementation context, both of which were shown to influence evidence utilisation. The study contributes to current debate on the extent to which W&O psychologists adopt an evidence-based approach and provides a valuable and much called-for empirical insight into the enactment of the scientist-practitioner model in W&O psychology