Primary Care Education, Pathways and Research in Dementia (PREPARED)

Funded by the Health Service Executive and The Atlantic Philanthropies as part of Ireland's National Dementia Strategy Implementation Programme (2014-2018) : Grant €1.2m

The PREPARED project was a primary care focused national research and service development initiative coordinated by the Department of General Practice at UCC which ran between 2015 and 2019 and was led by Dr Tony Foley.  PREPARED contributed to the delivery of the priority actions and objectives for primary care health services set out in the Department of Health's publication 'The Irish National Dementia Strategy (December 2014). The strategy aimed to improve the lives of people with dementia by increasing awareness, ensuring early diagnosis and developing enhanced community based interventions.

The PREPARED project consisted of 4 inter-related workstreams which addressed he following:

• The preparation and dissemination of primary care dementia training and education packages for GPs and members of Primary Care Teams across Ireland
• The delivery of education and training with support to clinical dementia experts to lead education and mapping of local dementia care pathways, and the engagement of and support for GPs and PCTs to deliver best practice dementia care
• To facilitate behaviour change with the application of decision support software, web based guidelines and integrated dementia care pathways, and clinical toolkits
• To research and evaluate the project on an ongoing basis by conducting dementia learning needs assessments, and assessing the impact on the education, engagement and IT innovation in the delivery of dementia care by GPs and PCTs

A video film from the PREPARED launch which provides an overview of the project is on youtube.