Family Medicine Research Day

Background: Clinical practice for detection, evaluation, management and support of patients and families dealing with Mild Cognitive Impairment/Dementia is not well standardized. Earlier detection affords patients and their family caregivers greater opportunity to come to terms with the challenge of MCI and to arrange coping plans for the present and future. Methods: We undertook an intervention to improve standardization of MCI care that included clinician education, experiential learning of mindful self-compassion skills and EPIC-based supportive tools for clinical decision support, documentation, orders and patient education. These interventions were carried out in a step-wedge approach with two of our FM clinics (SR first followed by GEN) in 6 month time periods. 6-9 clinicians in each clinic participated. Results: Educational and experiential mindful self-compassion experience interventions were well received and resulted in improvements in self-reported comfort and skill in dementia-related clinical skills. Screening improved from 51-79% of those eligible who were up-to-date with screening, comparing pre-and post data in the first clinic. Initial use of recommended follow up evaluation tools appears to be low. Conclusion: While this is a mid-study preliminary report the results indicate that education is effective as assessed by self-report among participating clinicians. While preliminary, the first comparisons of before and after intervention at the first clinic indicate that screening improved substantially. Further analysis comparing control clinic with first intervention clinic and 2nd clinic before and after will be completed soon. Further analysis comparing performance of study clinicians vs. non-study clinicians will also be carried out. Further evaluation of use of recommended evaluation tools will also be done.