Dan'Yale Wright

Mentor: Dr. Natalie Douglas
Research: The Impact of Dementia Collaborative Coaching on Functional Communication

Dementia is a neurodegenerative syndrome that impacts memory, communicative skills, and the ability to independently engage in daily activities. Dementia can limit a person’s ability to effectively communicate their wants and needs which often leads to negative behavioral and psychological distress. This research focused on Dementia Collaborative Coaching, a person-centered training approach aimed to aid people living with dementia in communication skills to limit this behavioral and psychological distress. This study compared pre/posttest measures of the Functional Linguistic Communication Inventory-2 (FLCI-2), to determine if Dementia Collaborative Coaching improves or maintains functional communicative skills in people living with dementia in nursing homes. All participants in this study improved their FLCI-2 scores, resulting in better communication skills following the Dementia Collaborative Coaching intervention.