Rural general practitioner confidence in diagnosing and managing dementia: A two-stage, mixed methods study of dementia-specific training.

Introduction: Dementias a prevalent chronic healthcare condition affecting 46 million people worldwide and projected to grow in the coming years. Australians living in rural and regional areas often lack access to specialist dementia care, despite greater prevalence relative to metropolitan areas.

Objective: This study aimed to explore general practitioners (GP) understanding, confidence and attitudes towards dementia management in the rural context, and design and pilot a dementia-specific training program.

Design: A two-stage, mixed methods design, using qualitative and quantitative methods. Sixteen regional GPs from across Victoria participated in scoping semi-structured interviews. Fourteen separate GPs in the St Anthony Family Medical Practice group in the regional Loddon-Mallee area of Victoria completed the pilot training intervention. Pre- and post-training surveys (n = 10), as well as post-training interviews (n = 10), assessed attitude and knowledge changes.

Findings: Analysis of semi-structured scoping interviews indicated three themes regarding experience of dementia management, including: (1) attitudes to and experiences of dementia; (2) supporting people living with dementia; and (3) knowledge, education and training of dementia. The pilot dementia-specific training was found to improve attitudes (agreement across 24 best-practice indicators improved from 30% to 79%), knowledge (median increase of 2.5/10) and confidence in managing dementia and disclosing dementia diagnoses (median increase 3/10 and 2.75/10, respectively).

Discussion: General practitioners in this study lacked initial confidence in detecting and managing dementia in a rural primary care setting. A targeted training program showed improvements in these areas.

Conclusion: Accessible, locally delivered, dementia education has the potential to improve confidence in early detection and management of people with dementia and thereby may address gaps in access to care for people living with dementia in rural settings.