Patient Navigation Toolkit | Centre for Research in Integrated Care | UNB

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Centre for Research in Integrated Care

Exploring patient navigation for people with dementia, their caregivers and the care team

This project examines patient navigation programs for people with dementia, their caregivers and the care team. It aims to improve the integration, coordination, and navigation of community-based services and supports and resources for this population.

Needs assessments are useful because they can help you identify, understand and prioritize the needs affecting your community. It is an important initial step when planning an intervention.

This document serves as a framework of how to conduct a needs assessment with the goal of implementing a patient navigation program for people with dementia, their caregivers and members of the care team. This toolkit includes several documents to support this process, including interview questionnaires and consent forms.

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As the number of Canadians with dementia sharply increases, patient navigation is a way to coordinate and integrate care for people with dementia and their caregivers and counter fragmented, uncoordinated and often difficult to navigate systems.

Part of what makes dementia care complex is that the needs of people with dementia are individual and change according to its different stages. Patient navigation programs for people with dementia have the potential to:

  1. Improve experiences with health and social care systems for people with dementia, their caregivers, and the care team through improving the integration and coordination of care.
  2. Increase access to resources and support.
  3. Generally improve health outcomes for people with dementia and their caregivers.

This "how to" document serves as a framework for the development and implementation of a navigation program to serve those with dementia, their caregivers and the care team. This toolkit includes several documents to support this process, such as intake forms; information on setting up a patient and family advisory council; policy documents; and evaluation tools.

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Environmental scans are useful because they can help you inform your organization's goals and strategies. To conduct an environmental scan, you gather information from the external and internal environments to identify trends and issues to inform decision-making and future actions for an organization or on a particular topic.

Our environmental scan examines patient navigation programs for people with dementia, their caregivers and/or members of the care team across Canada. This document summarizes the result of our environmental scan results, which can be accessed in full when it is published.

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Scoping reviews are useful because they evaluate and summarize all available information on a particular topic. They combine a range of sources and study designs to summarize available information to inform practice, policy or programs. They can also provide direction for future research.

Our team conducted a scoping review to explore the characteristics of patient navigation programs for people with dementia, their caregivers, and/or members of the care team. This document summarizes our scoping review's results, which you can read about in full when it is published.

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