Primary Health Care for People with Dementia: Exploring Care Provided by Collaborative Family Practice Teams

As the population ages, it is becoming increasingly important to find ways to support people with dementia to live well in the community. Primary healthcare that is comprehensive, integrated and effective is important to ensuring people with dementia have the support necessary to live in the community, and team-based approaches, where doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses and other health care providers, work together to provide care have been identified are particularly well suited to the needs of people with dementia. To date there has been little research exploring how these teams provide care. It is important to do this work so that effective practices are identified and gaps in service provision can be found. The proposed project will be guided by people with dementia and their caregivers, and will explore the care provided by collaborative family practice teams to people with dementia through case study research. Qualitative methods will be used to ask primary care providers, people with dementia and caregivers about their experience with collaborative family practice teams, and guided appointments-where a research accompanies a person with dementia through the process of attending a primary health care appointment-will be used to understand the perspective of people with dementia. Data will be analyzed by comparing and contrasting multiple data sources and perspectives to develop themes to describe how collaborative family practice teams provide care. Findings will support the development of recommendations for improving primary health care for people with dementia, and provide opportunities for practice development among primary care providers.