Implementing person centred dementia care: a musical intervention

Argyle, Elaine; Kelly, Tony

Abstract

Purpose - Recent years have seen the advocacy of person centred approaches to dementia care. An important component of this approach has been the use of arts in the promotion of health and wellbeing. However, relatively little attention has been given to the barriers and facilitators experienced in trying to implement these types of interventions in a dementia care setting. It is therefore the purpose of this article to help to redress this neglect by examining the process of implementing a personalized musical intervention for clients of a specialist dementia home care service.

Design/methodology/approach - Drawing on interviews with five project stakeholders, the paper examines, not only the potential benefits to be gained from the musical intervention but also identifies the barriers experienced in its implementation and ways in which they could be overcome.

Findings - It was found that although the musical intervention had a potentially positive impact, there were multi-leveled barriers to its implementation including issues of training, leadership as well as contextual issues such as commissioning and resourcing more generally.

Originality/value - The key role played by these issues in the process of implementation suggests that practice should transcend its focus on individual well-being and address the wider factors that can facilitate or prevent its fulfillment. While the multi-leveled nature of the obstacles identified suggest that the implementation of innovative interventions within health and social care settings should adopt a similarly eclectic approach.

Citation

Argyle, E., & Kelly, T. (2015). Implementing person centred dementia care: a musical intervention. Working with Older People, 19(2), https://doi.org/10.1108/WWOP-12-2014-0041

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Dec 14, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 14, 2015
• Journal: Working With Older People
• Print ISSN: 1366-3666
• Electronic ISSN: 2042-8790
• Publisher: Emerald
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/WWOP-12-2014-0041
• Keywords: Person centred approaches, Dementia, Musical intervention, Leadership perspectives, United Kingdom
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/987694
• Publisher URL: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/WWOP-12-2014-0041
• Additional Information: Copyright Emerald Group Publishing, 2015