eXubrio Publishing

Alzheimer's DVD

The program is designed to improve the skills of Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) and reduce the incidence of behavioral disturbances of hursing home residents with dementia, improving their quality of life.
The program was developed by a consortium of five nursing homes and the Alzheimer's Association chapters in Western and Central New York and produced by Full Circle Studios, a digital media production company specializing in the creation of innovative education and training programs.Content was based on the input of focus groups conducted at the five nursing homes involved in the project. The program incorporates widely accepted principles of Instructional Design, including advanced organizers, interactive sequences, formative evaluation and behavior modeling. Demonstrations and simulations were produced in a real nursing home environment using a combination of actual staff and trained "standardized patients" to illustrate typical behaviors.
Proven effectiveness: Measurement using the BMS before and after staff used the program resulted in a remarkable reduction of behavioral disturbances by 51% in the ten dementia-care units involved in the formal evaluation of the program.
In a survey of users, CNAs responded very favorably when asked for their opinions about the program: Using a rating scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high), mean scores were:

3.92 for amount of new information learned
4.34 for how much the training will help in their work with persons with dementia
4.17 for the likelihood the user would recommend the training to other CNAs

On pre-and post-test scores for knowledge, mean scores improved for all test items, seveal at a significance level greater than .001.

(Data provided by Linda Sabo, Executive Director, Alzheimer's Association of WNY.)