Amazing Maizie helps shape dementia care of the future

Maizie Mears-Owens works for Care UK - one of the most highly regarded residential home providers in the country. Her job is unique – she helps the company to devise new, improved ways of caring for people with dementia. In the article below, Maizie talks about how she made the transition from a timid drama student, via mental health nurse and care home manager to a widely respected expert on dementia care.

“Even as a child, I was always fascinated by how people communicated with one another. At my school, I’d watch how other pupils from different backgrounds interacted and I observed how drama classes could help students to step into the shoes of other people and understand more about how they were feeling.

One day, when I was only sixteen, I read an article about how drama therapy was helping people with mental health problems. It was a life changing moment. From that day on, I knew that I wanted to use drama to help people. But there was a problem; being an actor wasn’t enough. I also needed to have a clinical background. So I decided to train as a mental health nurse. As part of that training I worked in an old –fashioned institutional setting for people with dementia. A stark dormitory with rows of beds, people living few personal possessions and little in the way of social interaction.

On that ward, I learnt firsthand, how my drama training could help draw out people’s memories and interest. People who were sitting staring at walls and rocking themselves out of sheer frustration and boredom had stories. All my life I have been eager to learn better communication techniques - by trying to get into the other person’s mind and experiencing conversations, situations and emotions as they do. This interest and my drama training helped me to reach out to these patients and I discovered people on the ward who had held down highly regarded professional careers and others who had successfully made a home and raised a family. I found that, while those fellow nursing students who had come through the care path were better at the technical elements, my drama training allowed me to see things from the patient or resident’s perspective and to grasp what they were trying to communicate.

That experience only served to strengthen my resolve to find ways of helping people with dementia and other mental health conditions to lead a more fulfilling life. But finding that opportunity was a long and bumpy career pathway. I’ve had many different jobs in health and social care, some good and some not so good. If an organisation couldn’t match my values of compassion and empathy for vulnerable people I didn’t feel able to work there. Equally importantly, I wanted to be able to use my creativity and passion to really make a difference.

After qualifying as a mental health nurse, my career progressed through the NHS and then working in several private and local authority-run care homes, including managing medium sized nursing homes. Most of my roles have involved caring for people with dementia. I’ve also worked with groups of informal carers. In between, I finally achieved my dream of qualifying as a drama therapist.

In 2008, I started a new job as service development manager with a new employer - Care UK. Suddenly I found myself working in an environment where I felt that my values matched those of my employer. Care UK staff are encouraged to help care home residents to make meaningful choices about the kind of life they wanted to lead. Our managers encourage us to suggest improvements and our ideas are listened to. For the first time in my life, I felt I was in a role where I could really make a difference to people with dementia.

Training as a drama therapist had taught me so much more about methods of communicating with people who may struggle to make themselves understood in a traditional way and this, along with my experience working with people with dementia, got me thinking about how we could make improvements to the way we deliver care.

I’ll explain with an example: to this day, it worries me that some colleagues in the medical profession are quick to treat problems with drugs rather than trying to see things from the patient or resident’s perspective. For example, what might seem to be hallucinations, to be treated with powerful anti-psychotics, could be simply tricks of the light on someone’s impaired vision making reflections in a window look like a stranger lurking outside. They are visual misperceptions rather than hallucinations.

Someone in Care UK must have noticed my passion for improving dementia care. Before long, I was invited to create a completely new way of training Care UK’s staff. Not with books and lectures, but by giving the staff a taste of what it might be like to have dementia. I was delighted – here was a chance to match my creative interests with my passion for good care. My approach was a marriage of my experience in communicating with people, solid scientific research on dementia from places like the University of Stirling and a dash of good old fashioned stagecraft.

Staff are invited to take part in a one-day course that gives them direct experience of the dramatic effect that dementia and frailty can have on the senses. I take colleagues through a whole day where nothing seems to make sense. For example, special glasses blur their vision, headphones deliver white noise, and gloves restrict the movement of fingers. Trainees can find themselves being fed food that they cannot see, drinking tea from a plastic training cup and being asked several questions in quick succession without enough time to think of replies.

I’m told mild Maizie turns into a grim faced, taciturn trainer who speaks in that annoying high pitched voice reserved by so many for use with small children and frail adults.

My training moves trainees in hoists, take them to the toilet and I have even left them outside the training room for three quarters of an hour with a note on the door saying ‘I’ll be back soon. Do not enter - the door is alarmed.’ They get angry and frustrated. I ask them how they feel, and then ask them how someone with dementia would feel in an equally strange and confusing situation, especially as they may also be in pain. Is it any wonder that sometimes residents behave in what is seen as an inappropriate way? They are having a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Suddenly, a whole pocket full of pennies drop with the trainees.

Sometimes, after working out the dynamics of a group, I start pulling at people’s clothes. Most resist, some become anxious and some get angry. This is exactly how a person with dementia may react if something happens to them that they don’t understand or like. If this begins, and carers are not empathetic, the therapeutic relationship breaks down.

The best thing about my job is that I get to see that eureka moment when colleagues realise how they can make a real difference to residents’ lives. I was so pleased when a carer who had recently completed the course reported back that someone in their home had become agitated, asking for holes. The member of staff looked all around and realised that the resident had seen peas on the trolley and wanted some. The resident hadn’t been able to think of the word for this round green vegetable but on the white plate of the resident sitting next to her, what could she see? Green holes. The resident was given her peas and was happy and relaxed again and the member of staff could see a very real benefit of the experiential training – the ability to think differently.

We are not just training care staff but all those who work in homes and day centres, from the managing director to the maintenance staff. They all work in the residents’ home and we must provide the same levels of understanding and care from everyone they meet on a daily basis. I don’t mind admitting to a few butterflies and a case of stage fright when preparing to deliver my course to a group of senior managers from our head office but I need not have worried. They found it enlightening, frightening and thought provoking and were 100 per cent behind my approach.

This level of training is what sets Care UK apart from other providers. I train up to three days a week, any more is physically and emotionally draining, no matter how exhilarating and rewarding. The training involves lots of travelling and nights away from my sons so I treasure the time I do have with them at home.

If my work helps staff to make residents’ lives more fulfilling and enables them to feel appreciated and valued, I know that I have made a difference – jobs don’t get more rewarding than that.

Maizie Mears-Owen has recently been appointed as Care UK’s Head of Dementia Care. To find out more about Care UK’s homes visit our Dementia care page.

You can see a video of Maizie in action providing dementia care at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12899321