Developing a long-term relationship with dementia care within the Royal Edinburgh Hospital through exploring ways in which patients, families, nursing staff and artists can work together as a team; learning from each other in order to make positive change within a ward.
Artlink has been working at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital over several years providing a range of participative arts opportunities and artists placements. The longer-term nature of our involvement allows relationships with patients and staff to evolve over time and creates opportunities to link in with specific NHSL led quality improvement initiatives.
In partnership with Charge Nurse Frank Charleston we identified Pentland Ward at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, a long stay ward for men with early onset dementia, as the best possible place to take a longer term learning team approach. It was also the focus of a Quality Improvement initiative led by Frank and Frances Aitken, NHSL Practice Improvement and Development and therefore had the added benefit of understanding how arts activity can contribute to creating positive ward environments which contribute positively to staff development and tackles absenteeism and high staff turnover which has a negative effect on quality improvement efforts.
It was decided that the learning team should consist out of NHSL staff, relatives, Artlink producer and artists, and patients. Pentland Ward was selected to ensure a continuity of involvement for both patient and family members. Selecting a long stay ward allowed us to take time to establish strong working relationships and follow through work with the same people from beginning to end. From the outset, we identified that it would be important to bring in other collaborators/ organisations to increase both the reach and scope of the project, as well as provide the additional resources that our collaborators would bring.
Read the full case study and its appendices here.
Our collaborative work also supported aditonal involvment from the University of Edinburgh which can be explored below.