Student nurses and other trainee healthcare professionals are failing to
be taught about dementia care to the same standard due to inconsistent
approaches by regulators, academics working in the field have claimed.
The Higher Education Dementia Network, which represents lecturers at 65
UK universities, said nationally agreed dementia training frameworks already
existed but were not being used by regulators.
“Professional bodies have a clear role to play in ensuring the
health…workforce are meeting the needs of those affected by dementia”
The group said this meant there was likely to be a wide variation in the
amount of dementia training healthcare students received at university.
This risked parts of the health and care workforce having different
levels of knowledge, skills, competencies and attitudes towards caring for people
with dementia, the academics warned.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s current training standards do not
explicitly require universities to teach students about dementia, although they
do refer to working with people with cognitive impairment, said the group.
While new education standards being developed by the NMC do refer to
dementia care, there is still no mention of meeting standards set out in
nationally agreed skills frameworks, the group said in a position paper published on Tuesday.
The lecturers called for the Nursing and Midwifery Council and other
regulators to require universities to adopt the existing training frameworks.
“The existing dementia knowledge and skills frameworks from across the
four home nations of the UK have been developed by expert panels”
They said universities in England should be required to use the Dementia
Skills and Knowledge Education and Training Framework drawn up in 2015 by
Health Education England, Skills for Health and Skills for Care.
In other parts of the UK, the Promoting Excellence Framework in
Scotland, Good Work Framework in Wales, and the Dementia Learning and
Development Framework in Northern Ireland should be included within the NMC and
other regulator’s requirements for university education, they added.
“The existing dementia knowledge and skills frameworks from across the
four home nations of the UK have been developed by expert panels including
people affected by dementia, health and social care providers or their
representatives, governmental bodies and education providers,” said the
position paper, released to coincide with the UK Dementia Congress in Doncaster
this week.
“In developing our new standards, we engaged with a wide range of
stakeholders including dementia charities and we’ve had an excellent response”
Claire Surr, a member of the Higher Education Dementia Network and
professor at Leeds Beckett University, said: “Professional bodies have a clear
role to play in ensuring the health, social care and housing workforce are
meeting the needs of those affected by dementia.
“We would like to see national knowledge and skills frameworks
established as a required and monitored sector minimum standard. We recommend
that application of the frameworks become a requirement for (re)validation of
health, social care and housing pre-qualifying education.”
A spokesman for the NMC said it was vital that nurses were equipped with
skills to care for people with a range of complex healthcare needs, including
dementia, especially in light of the ageing population.
”That’s why we’ve recently consulted on draft education standards which
will enable nurses to deliver the highest standards of care to people with
cognitive healthcare needs,” he said.
“In developing our new standards, we engaged with a wide range of
stakeholders including dementia charities and we’ve had an excellent response
to our consultation. We’ll take this feedback into account as we finalise our
standards,” he added.
SOURCE: nursingtimes.net, Nicola Merrifield
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