Organizational Learning in Alzheiimer Services: an action-research

The paper illustrates an action-research experience carried out in an Italian Foundation with a great tradition in dealing with Alzheimer patients. The experience has involved different professionals and patient’s relatives. The aim was directed to improve the quality of the services, with particular attention to the quality of relation between professionals and caregivers. Data comes from different methods proposed with professionals and caregivers: semi structured interviews; clinical-social elaboration groups; DSVO (symbolic drawing of organizational lifespace); CBI (caregiver burden inventory). Verbal data has been analyzed by content analysis with the support of the software Atlas.ti, a symbolic – interpretative analysis on drawings and a statistical analysis on CBI. The most relevant outcomes are illustrated (e.g. change of the represenations concerning patients with Alzheimer's disease and their care)