Date of Award

January 2025

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Yale University School of Nursing

First Advisor

David Vlahov

Abstract

In 2019, more than half of nursing home residents were estimated to have had dementia (PRB, 2023). In 2020, about 300,000 of these residents had been prescribed antipsychotics (Jaffe, 2020). Per the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) (2021), nearly one in three nursing home residents were inappropriately diagnosed to justify the use of antipsychotics. Individuals diagnosed with dementia and prescribed with antipsychotics have a 78% higher risk of death (Kheirbek et al., 2019). Educational training can serve as an effective tool for advancing knowledge of antipsychotics in avoidance of inappropriate use, specifically when directed toward nursing home providers and staff. By providing education and training surrounding antipsychotic use in nursing homes to providers and administrative staff, this DNP pilot project focused on antipsychotics, its definition and use, as well as new CMS guidelines on antipsychotics and California nursing home incentives and citations. The aim of the program was to provide education and training surrounding antipsychotic use in nursing homes. This training was developed and implemented within seven nursing homes across Central and Southern California via an on-line antipsychotic educational training program. The program was delivered through a secured website, which included a pre- and post-test questionnaire designed to assess knowledge acquisition, and Likert scale and open-ended questions for program evaluation. A paired-t test of pre- and post-knowledge acquisition score showed a significant increase with a p-value <.001. This training program was designed as a first step to show feasibility towards scalability with evaluation of practice change as the next step.

Comments

This is an Open Access Thesis.

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