Skills for Meaningful Encounters in Nursing Homes (KOHO)

The Skills for Meaningful Encounters in Nursing Homes project aims to enhance the expertise related to working with people with dementia, with a particular focus on interactions with individuals affected by memory disorders. The project seeks to strengthen professional’s understanding of these facilities as the last homes for older individuals. It provides tools and new capabilities for staff to engage with residents who have memory impairments, recognizing them as unique individuals who have lived long lives. 

The main goal of the project is to enhance encounter-related expertise through individual development within each care home and shared activities. To ensure that the initiatives align with the daily needs of nursing homes, specific areas for improvement are identified collaboratively with partners.

Concrete development work always starts from the specific needs of individual nursing homes, but successful processes can also be adopted in other units. The spread of proven practices is facilitated through regional and national online training sessions. Within the project, we conduct expert training tailored to the needs of nursing homes, engage in group discussions, and organize functional workshops.

We ensure that the results and developed best practices benefit Finnish care service providers. The encounter expertise generated during the project will be refined into the “Encounter tool box,” accessible to everyone through the Pirkanmaa Muistiyhdistys ry’s website. 

Additionally, recognizing the strong message from service providers during the project’s preparatory phase about the need to enhance staff competence in understanding memory disorders and interacting with individuals affected by them, we are also creating the “KOHO-Passport” (KOHO-passi). The Memory Passport is an online tool that allows anyone to test their knowledge of memory disorder symptoms while simultaneously learning better ways to engage with individuals behind those conditions.