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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.522
igaa057.522
Abstracts
Session 2884 (Poster)
Dementia
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Delivering and Embedding Dementia-Friendly Training in a Healthcare System
Schneider Ellen 1 Dale Maureen 2 Wells Krista 3 Gotelli John 3 Julian Carol 2 Henage Cristine 2 Busby-Whitehead Jan 2 Roberts Ellen 2 1 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
2 
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States
3 
UNC Health Care, Hillsborough, North Carolina, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”160 161
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Alzheimer’s disease is the 4th leading cause of death in North Carolina for people 65 and older. People with dementia are hospitalized more often and have prolonged stays, poorer outcomes, higher costs, and increased readmission rates. Hospital employees have expressed the desire to have specialized training to learn how to more effectively communicate with and provide better care to patients with dementia. To address identified patient and hospital employee needs, the University of North Carolina (UNC) Center for Aging and Health is disseminating hospital-specific dementia-friendly training at five hospitals within the UNC Health System. The training is being delivered via online modules and follow-up didactic sessions over a three-year period to clinical and non-clinical staff who interact with patients. To date, 1,948 employees at three of the five hospitals have launched the online training; 1,102 have completed the training. The pilot training took place at the UNC Hospitals--Hillsborough Campus (“Hillsborough Hospital”) in 2019. Hillsborough Hospital staff (n=195) who participated in the dementia friendly training completed a survey to assess their ability to recognize symptoms and provide appropriate care to dementia patients pre- and post-training. Clinical staff answered 23 Likert scale self-efficacy questions; non-clinical staff answered the first 12 of these questions. Positive change in self-efficacy ratings from pre- to post-training was significant for every question (p < .0001). Additional results will be included in the poster. The dementia-friendly hospital initiative is preparing employees to provide better care for people with dementia and is effective in increasing employee self-efficacy.