In collaboration with Wisconsin Department of Health Services (WI DHS), UW CIPE offered the 2024 Interprofessional Practice Learning (IPL) Dementia Caregiving Badge from February 1st to the end of April in which 15 students/learners from Medicine, Pharmacy, Physical Therapy, Pre-Health, Social Work programs from UW–Madison, and Beloit College participated. The students were placed in 4 interprofessional teams who worked collaboratively with four caregivers of people living with dementia, Dementia Care Specialists (DCS), and faculty facilitators to develop a customized community resource packet and a collaborative health promotion plan (as a Capstone Project) for the caregiver.
The debrief session of this IPL Dementia Caregiving Badge was held on Thursday, April 26, 2024. Below is a graph from a debrief poll from the evening. The graph below shows the results of the question asking students, facilitators, and caregivers who were in attendance, if they felt the course achieved the program goal of assisting them to improve their interprofessional competencies of which 17/17 said yes.
Comments from participants regarding positive elements of IPL Dementia Caregiving Badge experience:
- I got a good understanding of the healthcare system from the perspective of dementia and understood a lot about care giving and the need to address the problems caregivers face in different countries. (Physical Therapy Student)
- I enjoyed learning from the caregiver and being able to talk with my peers to learn what perspectives they would add to our discussion from their schooling. (Medicine Student)
- Learning more about the community resources available, being able to work on facilitation skills (Facilitator)
For those who are interested in this opportunity, as well as the Advance Dementia Interprofessional Clinical Simulation (ADICS) an RSVP for 2024-2025 offerings has been created.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the participants, caregivers, DCS, facilitators, planning team, and WI DHS for their participation and great contribution to the success of this year’s offering. A special shout-out to:
Wisconsin DHS: Kristen Felten and Kathleen Smith
Dementia Care Specialists: Bonnie Bean-Stratz, Teresa Gander, Pam Kul-Berg, and Trisha Witham
Facilitators: Rachel Bergstrom, Abeigh Clist, Beth Fields, and Jaime Goldberg
Project Coordinators: Anna Lemke, Kaitlyn Hawley and Sue Wenker
We look forward to continuing the UW CIPE IPL Dementia Caregiving Badge course with the support of the Wisconsin DHS through the Becoming Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) 2.0 grant.