People with dementia and their family carers' satisfaction with a memory service: A qualitative evaluation generating quality indicators for dementia care

Background: UK health policy requires the early identification and management of dementia. There are few good quality evaluations of models of care in dementia with a particular lack of data from user and carer perspectives. The Croydon Memory Service Model (CMSM) was developed to identify and treat people in the early stages of dementia and its evaluation includes an assessment of service satisfaction.Aim: To complete a qualitative investigation into the satisfaction with the service of those assessed and treated using the CMSM.Method: The CMSM was the subject of a multi-method evaluation, as part of this, semi-structured qualitative interviews were carried out with 16 people with dementia and 15 family carers to establish their opinions of the service. Purposive sampling was used to identify participants with a range of diagnosis, ethnicity, and age. Conventional Content Analysis was used to analyse the data.Results: Six themes concerning satisfaction emerged from the data: initial experience of dementia; service experience; helpful interventions; normalizing the catastrophic; clear communication; and gaps in service. Peer support and clear communication were seen as valuable assets provided by the service, allowing participants to use coping strategies which normalized having dementia.Conclusions: From these data we can derive seven quality indicators with which to judge services for people with dementia: (i) provision of broad-based care as well as assessment; (ii) clear communication about diagnosis and care; (iii) continuing peer support groups; (iv) easy availability of staff; (v) professional staff behaviour; (vi) the service working for people with young-onset dementia and their carers; (vii) strategies to manage those with subjective memory impairment but no objective deficits.