Margaret MacAndrew

The Getting Home Safely with dementia project is a three-phase program aiming to reduce the number of people with dementia who go missing and to find missing persons alive. Around 20% of police land searches involve a person with dementia; one third of these were from residential aged care (RAC) and 15% were not found alive. Inappropriate safety measures and delaying the search increases the risk of not finding missing people with dementia alive and uninjured. Phase 1 of the project generated an action plan and tested resources to achieve the program goal. In this study, Phase 2, Dr MacAndrew will action these recommendations and pilot test a new approach to getting people with dementia home safely, using the 3Ps approach - improving awareness of the risk (PREPARE), early and ongoing risk assessment (PREVENT), and policy to guide RAC response to a getting lost event (PROMPT RESPONSE). Co-design workshops will be used to adapt existing training, risk assessment, and care planning resources for the RAC context. 

This pilot trial will evaluate the feasibility of training staff to use the resources to evaluate an individual's walking habits, identify those at risk of getting lost, and implement care to reduce the risk. The findings will inform further refinement of resources and study design prior to Phase 3, where a trial testing the efficacy of the 3Ps approach to reduce the number of people with dementia getting lost and increase the chances of finding them alive and uninjured, will be conducted.

Associate Professor Margaret MacAndrew is mid-career researcher at Queensland University of Technology leading a program of research focusing on improving the safety of older people and people with dementia through non-pharmacological interventions, better assessment and person centred care planning.