In 2009, a Clinical Nurse Consultant and colleagues developed and piloted a volunteer training program to ensure cognitively impaired older patients had companionship, meaningful activity, and assistance with eating, drinking, and walking where appropriate. The aim was to reduce the risk of delirium and adverse events such as falls and death, for cognitively impaired patients. The 15-year journey from pilot trial to national online training and lessons learned will be outlined in the presentation.
In 2014 the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation funded the development of an implementation and training resource. This resource was used to implement the program in another 7 NSW rural hospitals and other hospitals nationally and internationally. However, funding for volunteer coordination and face-to-face training availability were ongoing challenges.
In 2020 the hospital resource was transplanted for residential aged care via co-design with consumers, clinicians and government regulators. Outcomes included an increase in resident quality of life, and satisfaction by staff and families, increased companionship, calming effect, and reduced loneliness and staff care burden. However, face-to-face training and availability of volunteers due to COVID-19 hampered scalability.
In 2023 in partnership with Dementia Training Australia (DTA) the face-to-face content was converted into an interactive, online training course. In the first 9 months, there has been 1986 enrolments and 1078 completions nationally, dramatically increasing the reach of the training.
Conclusions: This journey shows how prolonged persistence, broad partnerships, and harnessing online technologies can sustain and build on research and practice change initiatives.