The Portrait System for Care Staff of People with Dementia

痴呆症在世界范围内日益受到关注，估计有3560万人患有痴呆症。随着人口老龄化，这个数字将会飙升。痴呆症患者的护理最近得到了大量的考虑，因为人们已经认识到，目前的护理解决方案往往达不到我们大多数人希望为亲人提供的护理标准。肖像系统旨在帮助护理人员将整个人视为个体，而不是简单地将其视为一组服务需求。在这一目标中，它是受欢迎的护理趋势的一部分，即寻求从基于任务的护理转向以人为本的护理。Portrait解决了日益增长的养老院人口的需求。这项工作采用了一种新颖的方法，通过关注护理人员，解决护理人员和居民之间促进对话的需要。对于那些有沟通困难的居民，比如那些由晚期阿尔茨海默氏症和其他形式的痴呆症引起的居民，由于护理人员的时间和技能有限，很难与这些居民展开对话。肖像系统是从护理人员的角度设计的。它提供了一种易于使用和快速的方法，可以在居民进入养老院之前获取他们的生活信息。简而言之，它可以让护理人员知道病人是谁。Portrait系统是项目研究员杰玛·韦伯斯特博士研究和开发工作的成果，通过使用简单而有效的“肖像”，该软件被创建为护理人员和痴呆症患者之间的沟通桥梁。迄今为止，许多研究和一些商业产品都针对痴呆症患者的记忆书籍和回忆疗法。像我们的Portrait软件一样，其中许多都使用多媒体软件。虽然这些记忆工具可能与护理人员共享，但没有一个是专门为满足护理人员的需求而设计的。Portrait在专门针对护理人员的工作时间表和可用性需求方面是独一无二的。肖像系统由每个养老院居民的多媒体肖像组成，呈现在一个方便快捷的触摸屏界面上。根据背景研究，如果人们进入养老院，他们希望护理人员了解他们的情况，每张肖像都包含有关该人的家庭，关键生活事件，偏好和爱好或兴趣的信息。该系统已在两家护理院的工作人员中进行了测试，并在为护理人员提供快速方便地访问有关居民的可用信息方面受到了好评。关于Portrait的早期工作在养老院的使用、社区参与和社会影响方面都产生了影响。“讲故事”项目将发挥更大的作用。Portrait软件将安装在英国的其他养老院，并将寻求商业许可。

Dementia is a growing concern worldwide, with an estimated 35.6 million people living with dementia. As the population ages, this number will soar. The care of people with dementia has recently been receiving a great deal of consideration as it has become recognised that current care solutions too often are not meeting the standard of care that most of us would want for loved ones. The Portrait system is designed to help care staff see the whole person not simply as a set of service needs, but rather as an individual. In this goal, it is a part of the welcomed trend of care-giving that seeks to move away from task-based care to person-centred care. Portrait addresses the needs of the growing population of people in care homes. The work takes a novel approach to this area by focusing on care-givers, addressing the need to facilitate conversations between care staff and residents. For residents with communication difficulties, such as those that arise from late stage Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, it is difficult for care staff, givien their limited time and skills, to initiate conversations with such residents. The Portrait system was designed from the perspective of care staff. It provides an easy to use and quick means of getting information about the lives of residents before they entered the care home. In short, it allows care staff to know who the people are.The Portrait system is the culmination of a research and development effort by the project researcher, Dr Gemma Webster, in which the Portrait software was created to act as a communication bridge between carers and people with dementia through the use of simple but effective 'Portraits'. To date, much research and several commercial offerings have aimed at memory books and reminiscence therapy for people with dementia. Like our Portrait software, many of these use multimedia software. While these memory tools might be shared with care staff, none were specifically designed to meet the needs of care staff. Portrait is unique in terms of specifically targeting the work schedules and usability needs of care staff.The Portrait system consists of multimedia portraits of each care home resident presented on an easily and quickly accessible touch-screen interface. Informed by background research on what people would like care staff to know about them if they went into a care home facility, each portrait contains information about the person's family, key life events, preferences and hobbies or interests. The system has been tested with staff from two care homes and was well-received in terms of providing the care staff with quick and easy access to usable information about residents.Early work on Portrait had impact in terms of both use at a care home, community engagement, and an award for social implications. This Telling Tales project will be used to provide greater impact. The Portrait software will be installed at additional care homes in the UK and commercial licencing will be pursued.