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

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1912
igaa057.1912
Abstracts
Session 5510 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Impact of Be EPIC on Person-Centered Communication
Savundranayagam Marie 1 Williams Kristine 2 Basque Shalane 1 Orange Joseph 1 Kloseck Marita 1 Johnson Karen 3 Schmall Vicki 4 1 
Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
2 
University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, United States
3 
McCormick Dementia Services, London, Ontario, Canada
4 
Aging Concerns, West Linn, Oregon, 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”575 575
© 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
This study assessed the impact of Be EPIC, a dementia-focused, person-centered communication intervention for personal support workers (PSWs). Video-recorded conversations between PSWs and simulated persons with dementia assessed whether Be EPIC participants (n=13) (versus a wait-list control group, n=8) reported a greater proportion of person-centered communication utterances (recognition, negotiation, facilitation, validation). We used linear mixed model analysis to investigate if Be EPIC influenced PSWs’ person-centered communication. Group (Be EPIC versus control group), time (pre-, post-, and 3-months) and their interaction were included in the model. There was a significant group by time interaction. Follow-up tests showed that participants who took Be EPIC showed significant increases in person-centered utterances from pre- to post-training and pre-training to 3 months later. Participants in the control group showed no changes in person-centered communication. These findings show that Be EPIC enhanced person-centered communication, which is essential for quality of care.