This week I am attending the Dementia Care Mapping (DCM) International Implementation Group meeting in Singapore.

There are 16 countries represented making it a real united nations experience. This group led by the University of Bradford Dementia Group maintain this quality improvement tool that is regarded world wide as “best practice” in the measurement of person centred dementia care.

In Australia DCM is not widely used but is effective in the pockets of aged care homes where it is used to great effect by the mappers. Over 750 people have been trained in thee use of the tool in the ten years since it was introduced by Virginia Moore and Kim Wylie. We at MPS hope it can continue to grow and become more widely known in aged care in Australia.

Some have suggested it is too expensive but when compared with the waste of money that goes into most training these days (that is ineffective in bringing about behaviour change in staff, which is the main aim of training is it not?) DCM is an economical method of implementing person centred change in cycles over time. The cost of maintaining trained mappers and giving them the time to map should be seen as an investment that is recouped every time they map.

More tomorrow as the meeting unfolds…

Bernie