Caring for people who wander

Type: Toolkit

Supporting Aged Care Quality Standard: 3

Carers of people with dementia who wander and live in the community have reported that they experience anxiety and burden associated with the fear that the person with dementia could become lost or injured while walking independently.

With limited guidelines carers have resorted to using extreme measures such as physical restraint and constant supervision to try to maintain safety. These reports have prompted us to review the current literature around strategies to manage wandering in the community.

We’ve develop a resource for carers based on current evidence. This resource includes:

A video presentation and presentation slides
Revised Algase Wandering Scale
- Community version (RAWS-VC) template
- Long Term Care version (RAWS-LTC) template

PRESENTERS

Dr Margaret MacAndrew

Dr Margaret MacAndrew is a lecturer at the School of Nursing at Queensland University of Technology.

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As an RN with experience in caring for people with dementia in long term care, she has an interest in improving quality of life for people with dementia and in particular people with dementia who wander. Over the past three years she has trialled two behavioural interventions that aimed to reduce risky aspects of wandering in in long term care and is currently developing a tool to reduce risk associated with wandering through accurate assessment and targeted care planning.

Deborah Brooks

Deborah Brooks is a researcher and project officer at the Dementia Collaborative Research Centre:

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Carers and Consumers at QUT. Her work focuses on improving the quality of life and care of people with dementia and their carers in both community and residential aged care settings. Previous work in the UK focused on assistive technology for people with dementia and their family carers living in the community. She is currently involved in a number of systematic reviews.

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