A phenomenological study on case managers’ experience of customized case management in dementia safety centers

This study aims to find the direction of case management practice for dementia clients and their families by analysing case management experiences of case managers in dementia safety centers. Eleven case managers (nurses and social workers) from six dementia safety centers who had performed customized case management for more than one year and agreed to participate in this study were selected as study subjects. The researcher guided subjects to describe their experiences through face-to-face and online in-depth interviews. The Colazzi method was used for qualitative analysis of interview data as this method focused on deriving common attributes of all study participants rather than individual ones. Results revealed that the structure of experiences of study participants could be categorized into four groups by identifying 17 topic collections among 44 constructed meanings. These four categorized groups were: organizational environment, stress, coping, and growth. As a result of this study, it was confirmed that organizational reorganization, such as resetting the evaluation system and standard work manual, was necessary in order to promote positive changes of the customized case management performance in a dementia safety center. This study also suggests that a public case management referring system and a cooperation model for dementia should be developed. In addition, follow-up studies are needed to establish a supervision system that can continuously monitor and improve work guidance, psychological and educational support for the case management practice process in dementia safety centers.