clinical focus
The Butterfly Model is over 20 years old. Why is it not more
widespread if it is so effective?
There’s a lot of different approaches out there and it’s a very
competitive game, I think, to see who can have the best quality
care. I think Dr David Sheard is trying his best to disseminate it as
far as he can, and they’re a very small organisation in the UK, but
they’re trying to get their name out there a bit more.
I think that this focuses on a holistic culture change and that’s
what makes it so different to anything else. It’s not just one
element of small households. It’s about the whole approach.
It’s about your staffing. It’s about emotional intelligence and
connecting with people living with dementia, so that’s what makes
it so special.
Do you think the implementation of this program has any
effect on injuries, medication levels and other afflictions that
sometimes occur with people with dementia?
Definitely. We’ve been monitoring a heap of datasets, and we’ve
had a huge reduction in falls. We’ve had a huge reduction in
physical restraints, in neuroleptic use of medications. We’ve
also had an increase, obviously, in improvement in the mealtime
experience, and improvement in quality of life. We’ve had some
positive weight gain as well.
Was there anything that wasn’t working with the system that
you had to check yourself and correct?
Obviously, it’s a culture change, so it did come with its challenges
to get everyone onboard, especially because it’s so different to
what we’re used to doing. So it definitely brought its challenges,
but at the same time it brought a huge number of benefits that
outweigh any challenges.
I think the challenges that we mainly faced were the small
things about service delivery and the logistics of breaking the
environment up, which initially caused some problems because it
was all different.
But we’ve managed to smooth all those problems out now, and
it’s a huge benefit for the staff, the people living here, and their
families, which is really important. The people living here are just
so much happier.
Can any residential aged care facility transition to this program
or do you need to have some pre-existing facilities?
Any facility can with the right support, and obviously the
management team has to be very passionate about it.
The management team here has had to take on a lot of extra
work to make it work. It didn’t matter what our facility looked like
before or anything – we made it work with what we’ve got.
We’re actually purpose-building Butterfly homes at the moment,
but with our existing facility, we managed to do it, so I think any
facility can, as long as they’ve got the right people driving it.
Is there anything more you would like to add?
I’d just like to say I hope this model can be more widespread in
Australia. The more you let everyone know about it and how good
it is, the more we can make people living with dementia a lot
happier and have much more fulfilled lives.
If people wanted to find out more, is there a website they
could go to?
Yes, there’s Dementia Care Matters (www.dementiacarematters.
com) and Barunga Village (barungavillage.com.au). ■
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