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People with dementia can have complex needs and often have one or more other health conditions like strokes, diabetes, and frailty.

Emergency hospital visits for people with dementia have increased significantly - in England alone, there was a 35% rise between 2012 and 2018. People with dementia are more likely to be admitted to hospitals and when admitted, they typically experience:

• Longer hospital stays
• Higher chances of returning to the hospital
• Higher death rates

Paramedics play a crucial role in emergency care for people with dementia. Guidelines require paramedics to provide person-centred care, recognise early signs of dementia, and work with other healthcare professionals to improve outcomes.

While research exists on how paramedics assess and make decisions about transporting dementia patients to emergency care, there's very little information about how people with dementia themselves experience these emergency situations.

This study seeks to address this gap by exploring the experience of people with dementia in urgent and emergency care situations. It also seeks to include people with dementia, as well as other key stakeholders in priority setting for future dementia care urgent and emergency care research.

This study builds on an existing portfolio of collaborative research we have completed with the University of Bradford, Faculty of Health Studies Paramedic team.

This research study has two central aims:

1. to explore the experiences of people with dementia during emergency care,
2. to set the priority for further research in urgent and emergency care for people with dementia and their carers.

Focus group or individual semi-structured interviews will be used with people living with dementia to explore their experience of emergency care situations and their perspectives on what the future research agenda for urgent and emergency care research should be.

Urgent and emergency care professionals, educators, researchers and commissioners will take part in a workshop to discuss their experiences of urgent and emergency dementia care and reach an agreement on what the key research priorities related to urgent and emergency care should be.

Together, these two work packages will help to increase our understanding of how people living with dementia experience paramedic care, and how we can improve matters for all stakeholders, setting priorities for future grant capture.

Results are expected in February 2026.

An output from previous related work can be found here:

• Jones, D., Capstick, A., Faisal, M & Frankland, J. (2023) The impact of dementia education on student paramedics preparedness to care, knowledge, confidence, and attitudes towards dementia. British Paramedic Journal, 8(1):9-17.

Principal Investigator

Dr Danielle Jones, Associate Professor in Dementia Studies, Centre for Applied Dementia Studies, University of Bradford

Co-Investigators

• Clare Mason, Assistant Professor in Dementia Studies and PPIE Lead, Centre for Applied Dementia Studies, University of Bradford
• Dr Felicity Slocombe, Lecturer in Dementia Studies, Centre for Applied Dementia Studies, University of Bradford