Project information
Innovating Knowledge Exchange
Innovating Knowledge Exchange: Student Involvement in Delivering Better Patient Experience in the NHS is a project jointly funded by Research England and the Office for Students. The project aims to build on a number of projects developed collaboratively by Dr Nicola Abraham from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and the Dementia Care Team within Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. The projects are applied theatre interventions designed specifically to support patients living with dementia and offer cognitively stimulating, bespoke workshops during their hospital stay. Usually our projects happen in-person but due to the restrictions in hospitals over the course of the pandemic, we have moved our projects to happen digitally through zoom following the same person-centred ethos as their practical counterparts.
We are consistently creating new projects and testing new ideas with the clinical expertise of the dementia care team, but at present we are running six projects per term offering numerous undergraduate and postgraduate student placements. All students who take part in the projects we offer undertake Tier 2 dementia training with Consultant Nurse Jo James.
This project is jointly funded by Research England and the Office for Students, and achieved through a number of important partnerships, between:
- Whitefield School
- ICS School
- Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
- Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
- One Housing
- My Improvement Network
- Leicester College
The project has won a number of awards including National Pearson Teaching Silver Award for Impact Through Partnership 2022, Music and Drama Education Finalist for Drama Inspiration and Outstanding Drama Initiative 2022, Finalist for TES Award of Community Engagement Initiative of the Year 2022, Guardian Teaching Excellence Award 2020. The project has so far produced 14 publications to a range of arts, and health journals including The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal. The project findings and research have been presented at 6 international arts and healthcare conferences, and 8 national conferences. We have worked with over 268 patients/care home residents across the project so far, offering over 138 placement opportunities to 58 students. We have trained over 100 NHS staff as part of the Dementia Care Team’s Dementia Study Day using an escape room to challenge unconscious bias and views about pain. We have also worked with over 180 children and young people across schools and college, who have all undertaking communication training and dementia awareness workshops ahead of their involvement in intergenerational projects with patients and care home residents. The project is ongoing and continuing to grow and develop, offering 6 masterclasses to NHS staff across 7 health boards in partnership with Public Health Wales as part of their Dementia Friendly Hospital Charter.