We all want to live a long and healthy life free from illness and mental deterioration. This is not always a reality as new Dementia Nurse Educator Tamara Williams knows too well. She has worked as a RN in mental health and in rest homes for many years and for the last four years she has worked four days a week in Kandahar’s dementia unit.
“I love not knowing what’s around the corner. The excitement of working with dementia patients is the challenge of trying to figure out which interventions work. Everyone is different with their own individual personalities and you have to be creative, adaptable and able to think on your feet. The satisfaction comes from living in the moment. You realize it wasn’t always like this and you try to figure out who the person was before and how you can help them now? It’s sometimes sad but a lot of fun.
“Working with families is very satisfying too – it gives you a head start if you know about the backgrounds of the people you work with and you can then understand how they once were. It’s really as much about working with families inclusively as it is the residents.”
Tamara will continue to work part-time at Kandahar as well as three days a week from Monday to Wednesday at Wairarapa DHB. She will run a programme for caregivers and nurses called ‘Walking in Another’s Shoes’, an initiative providing education and support for paid carers working with people living with dementia. It encourages person-centred care and it offers coping strategies in challenging situations. “They will learn how to cope with people who have dementia, how to speak to them and deal with them without inflaming the situation. It’s important to understand how your actions may trigger an incident or action and that there are different approaches of dealing with it.”
The programme started in Canterbury in 2008 and since then every DHB in the South Island has a “Walking in Another’s Shoes” Dementia Educator. In the North it has been rolled out to Hawkes Bay, Whanganui and Mid-Central DHBs. In Wairarapa attendees will come together for a full day’s training once a month for eight months and Tamara will visit rest homes to help carers and nurses work with people who have challenging behaviours.
“The whole programme is designed to effect culture change over a period of time,” says Tamara. “It aims to strengthen knowledge and skills and enhance insight into understanding and responding in a positive way to people living with dementia. Caregivers are encouraged to think differently about how they go about their interactions with the people they work with and will probably learn as much about themselves along the way.”
Tamara has a one year contract and is based at FOCUS, in the same office where she began her nursing career in mental health 10 years ago.
