Three members of the Forget Me Not group in Swindon, a service run by the Avon and Wiltshire Health Trust for people with early onset dementia, have launched a new set of training videos about communication. They are based on research done in collaboration with the University of Bristol.
Sandy Read, Harry Davis and Roy James have created videos based on research data largely collected by colleagues at the University of Bristol in dementia activity groups, memory cafes and other settings where people with dementia meet each other and engage in activities.
Findings from this research are practical and have direct relevance for all of us who communicate regularly with people with dementia. They are much more than “tips for talk”, as interaction unfolds in real time, where one thing that is said always relates directly to what has gone before.
In the videos, we have reconstructed real interactions, creating opportunities for viewers to think about new ways of interacting and perhaps to try them out in practice. Each video raises questions and pauses to allow for discussion. They are not intended to show correct and incorrect ways of communicating, because everyone is different, but they do stimulate reflection on how to overcome those tricky moments that we saw regularly come up and how they could have been avoided or overcome. We finish with the words of Roy, Harry and Sandie, who would like to see this research make a difference to the lives of all people living with dementia: ‘We’ve seen the kinds of things that happen on these videos. These aren’t stories. These are facts of life for us’ (Sandie); ‘There is room for us to learn from each other, and try to do things differently, to make life easier for each other’ (Harry); ‘We hope these videos will travel like wildfire. They are useful for everybody to see’ (Sandie); ‘From the doctors to the patients…We’ve got to get it across to them that people have to listen to us. We are the experts’ (Roy).
The videos are free to use, and can be streamed or downloaded from the University of Bristol’s web-page. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/gettingthingschanged/about-the-project/dementiatalk/dementia-communication-training-videos/
If you can’t copy the link, type ‘Dementia Communication Training Videos – University of Bristol’ into Google to find them. Let us know if you have watched them and what you think.
Dr Joseph Webb
Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow
School for Policy Studies
University of Bristol
