Stakeholders involved in the DNP project
The research question that has been undertaken is the effectiveness of virtual education for the dementia caregivers in the home health care. Home nurses caring for the dementia patient are responsible for the implementation and supervision of the everyday activities of the patient and encouraging involvement by cultivating a curative relationship with the client (Boots et al., 2014). Hence a nurse needs to be suitably educated which becomes very difficult in case of a home setting. Virtual education program in such cases can serve as effective methods of learning for those nurses. In such cases the virtual teacher provides all the contents of the courses by the help of course management applications, internet, video conferencing and other multimedia resources (Kim, 2015).
The stakeholders that should be involved in the DNP project are the psychiatric nurse practitioner, the home care nurses, the patient’s family and the project manager. The virtual education has to be given entirely online.
The non scientific stakeholders might not understand how virtual education can impact on the patient itself but can definitely note down its effects on the caregivers. The non scientific stakeholders might think that caregivers are entitled to give care to the patients at any cost but would certainly not analyze the level of stress suffered by the caregivers. Audio-visual aids on hallucinations, wandering and repetitive behavior can be shown to the scientific as well as the non scientific stakeholders. The educational program can be delivered over a one hour period time with the allotted time for case discussions and answers through an online portal. The registered nurse practitioners can demonstrate through that online portal.
All the ethical, social and political concerns have addressed before conduction of this study. The involvement of human participants in research is for serving as a source to data. As a researcher it is important to protect the autonomy of the people and to take the consent of the participants before the conduction of the survey.
This research will provide the rationale for providing virtual education to the caregivers who are engaged in home care and are unable to get one-to- one education. Such education will provide the caregiver the ways out for coping with the stress that they encounter with during their care regimen. Caregivers providing care to elderly patients often becomes victim to violence and suffers from emotional turmoil due to the aggression and the violence faced from the patients (Hostiuc et al., 2016). Virtual education can demonstrate the various non pharmacological interventions that can be applied for enhancing the cognition of such patients and influence their behavioral symptoms. The subjects such as the community of the nurses that provide home care to the dementia patients will be benefitted (Kim, 2015). The funders and the administrators will be facing the consequences on failure of the project. Dementia had become one of the most common ailments found in elderly patient and more than half of the caregiver caring for the dementia patients are suffering from fatigue, irritability, depression and burnout. Virtual education to the caregivers may help the patient caregiver therapeutic relationship (Kim, 2015). Hence this approach will affect the larger population as this initiative can increase the scope of the virtual education for the nurses.
Virtual education program for home nurses
If the approach is not followed then the caregiver’s stress might lead to job dissatisfaction. The caregivers would not be able to cope up with the distressing behavior of the patient. Furthermore caregivers in the home care support are not very well updated about the advancements in nursing practice due to their decreased mobility (Du et al., 2013) Such an approach would facilitate their learning within a home setting just due to the blessing of the world of networking.
Reflecting about the feedback of the families of the patients , majority of the families and the nurse administrators have consented that virtual education can open up the oceans of opportunities for the home based nurses, although many patient’s family are of the misconcept that the engagement of these nurses would affect the time of care.
With reference to this project, an accelerating intervention can surely affect the life of both the caregiver and the patient in a positive way. Fast education to the caregivers can accelerate the delivery of appropriate care to the patient. Virtual education can help the nurse to get introduced to evidence based researches that can affect the caregiver to cope up with the physical and emotional stress, fluctuating personality of the patient and fearful behaviors.
Reflecting on the social and the cultural values, a family might believe in a particular culture where education of caregivers might not be given that much importance or the caregivers might not be able to participate in the education program owing to the culture of the family. It is not that only caregivers are faced by ill treatment or stresses. Elderly dementia patient are often faced with restraints, which can be detrimental to their health status. Online education to the caregivers will impart them knowledge about the various behavioral therapies including the visual aids that can improve the treatment plan of the caregivers (Kim, 2015). Such a project will definitely bring about a positive impact on the nurse community at the home and beyond a health care setting. Virtual education would further help in the interprofessional development of the nurse. Virtual nursing in nursing helps to improve the clinical reasoning skills among the nurses (Du et al., 2013).
The evaluation strategy for this project can be interview questionnaires that should provide an insight to the extent of success of this project. The administrator has to identify the long term outcome of the project. While evaluation it is important to consider the socio economic condition of the nurses or the family to which they are providing care. The education program has got the potential to lower the stress among the care givers catering to less sick call. Less sick calls will give the facility for cost saving. The educational program will ultimately lead to an increased quality of care for the patients with dementia.
References
Boots, L. M. M., Vugt, M. E., Knippenberg, R. J. M., Kempen, G. I. J. M., & Verhey, F. R. J. (2014). A systematic review of Internet?based supportive interventions for caregivers of patients with dementia. International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 29(4), 331-344.
Du, S., Liu, Z., Liu, S., Yin, H., Xu, G., Zhang, H., & Wang, A. (2013). Web?based distance learning for nurse education: a systematic review. International nursing review, 60(2), 167-177.
Hostiuc, S., Moldoveanu, A., Dasc?lu, M. I., Unnthorsson, R., Jóhannesson, Ó. I., & Marcus, I. (2016). Translational research—the need of a new bioethics approach. Journal of translational medicine, 14(1), 16.
Kim, H. (2015). Understanding Internet use among dementia caregivers: results of secondary data analysis using the US caregiver survey data. Interactive journal of medical research, 4(1).
Shah, S. P., Glenn, G. L., Hummel, E. M., Hamilton, J. M., Martine, R. R., Duda, J. E., & Wilkinson, J. R. (2015). Caregiver tele-support group for Parkinson’s disease: A pilot study. Geriatric Nursing, 36(3), 207-211.