Ten Things We Need to Know About Dementia

This week the Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention and Intervention and Care published its findings which included 10 key messages that are the things we need to know!

Quite a lot of the media reports of this important paper have highlighted only the lifestyle changes that need to be made to reduce your risk of developing dementia but very few highlight the bottom line… which is even if you make the positive  lifestyle changes suggested that would reduce your potentially modifiable risk factors by  about 35% of your overall risk. The other 65% of dementia risk is thought to be potentially non-modifiable.

The paper though, says a lot more than this and “Being ambitious about prevention” the one the media focussed on is only No 2 on the list, so there are 9 more messages that got a lot less attention! To see the Lancet Paper click here Be warned it’s not short!

So what else caught my attention? Well this did the Commonwealth Fund, which surprisingly is a private American foundation that aims to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency in US Healthcare recently reported on a comparison they had made between 10 high-income countries health care systems performance: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Worryingly the USA came last in nearly everything. Surprisingly the top country was the UK! Who says our Health Care system is failing? I think it’s actually being failed by a Government that wants to adopt an American Healthcare Model.

The time has come to ask why when they should be learning from us

As the Commonwealth fund report states, based on a broad range of indicators, the U.S. health system is an outlier, spending far more but falling short of the performance achieved by other high-income countries. The results suggest the U.S. health care system should look at other countries’ approaches if it wants to achieve an affordable high-performing health care system that serves all Americans.

To read more about this report and to access the full version click here

Doing Literature Reviews and the Latest from the Royal College of OT’s

This week Susan Shenkin one of the editors for the British Geriatrics Society’s (BGS) Age and Ageing Journal has written the BGS’s Blog page. What she is writing about is her recent article in the journal that aims to provide guidance for people conducting systematic reviews relevant to the healthcare of older people.

If you are a student of mine doing your Masters please take note. This is great guidance for you to follow particularly as you head towards your dissertation. While the guidance is really there for review teams, it embraces a number of principles and contains some good tips that you could easily follow To see Susan’s Blog post go here. 

To download the article (which is Open Access) Click the link below

Systematic reviews: guidance relevant for studies of older people

This week also saw the Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT’s) publish their new report which is calling on the NHS and Local Authorities to refocus health and social care services. They warn that unless there is a shift from a ‘high volume, low cost’ approach to care, to one which sees the whole person’s overall wellbeing services will struggle to meet future demands.

In its report, the RCOT’s seeks to show how doing the right thing for individuals can
actually, reduce their need for expensive care long-term. It calls for an end to the postcode lottery in access to occupational therapy which is a barrier to people in need receiving high quality, person-centred care that enables people to stay as active, independent and safe as possible. For more details about their new report and to download the document go to  Living, not Existing: Putting prevention at the heart of care for older people

The video accompanying the report is here:

Care Homes and Bad Press

 

No More Bad News

 

I am always reluctant to post bad news about UK Care Homes because the negative publicity they receive is often underserved and reflects very poorly on most of the staff I meet from this sector of healthcare that do an amazing job, with far less support and money than their NHS counterparts. However, it was difficult to ignore this week the CQC which has suggested that 1 in 3 care homes in England may not be ‘safe’ with inspectors also noting they had a particular problem recruiting and retaining nurses.

So just to be clear here is the link to the CQC’s own press release that the news stories have been based on which contains the link to the full report which is called “The state of adult social care services 2014 to 2017”

A more interesting take on this is provided by one of my favourite Blogs, written by a man caring for his wife who has Dementia called Remember Me: Seeking the Good Life. To see what he has to say on the topic go to “Dementia Care Homes – The Futility of Inspection”

The obvious question now is how does Scotland fair in comparison? You get some idea from the raw data at the Care Commission Website Are we really in the same country?

After the negatives how about a positive in the same field. This is from England’s My Home Life Blog which is full of great stories and ideas for Care Homes and the particular Blog I am selecting Award Winning Service Share Their Learning is in very sharp contrast to all the usual reports of bad care. Enjoy reading this and exploring the site further.

Our New Masters Pathway!

Since last year the NES/SSSC National Dementia Champions teaching team, which I am part of has been working towards setting up a Masters Programme that will extend the work they do to create an Expert Level of Dementia Practice course. To put this into context click here to see the Promoting Excellence Knowledge and Skills Framework site

Details of the new MSc in Gerontology (with Dementia Care) can be found at

http://www.mastersportal.eu/studies/156034/gerontology-and-later-life-studies.html

or contact me directly at raymond.duffy@uws.ac.uk

Other big news was the publication of Scotland’s Third National Dementia Strategy 2017-2020. which although a little later than expected has finally arrived! To read about and download the strategy click here 

Alzheimers Scotland’s comments on the new strategy can be viewed by clicking this link 

Part of the new strategy is a commitment to test new ways of supporting people with advanced dementia and at the end of life including testing Alzheimers Scotland’s Advanced Dementia Practice Model. Very timely for the team here at UWS, as advanced dementia is a key theme throughout our new programme.

Being Home and Inspiration From Away

This week the team I work with were involved in the publication of a new report looking at the preparedness of Scotland’s housing to deal with the increasing numbers of people living with dementia. Called “Being Home: An overview of the current housing situation for people affected by dementia in Scotland” it Is the first report of its type done in the UK that I am aware of. Very timely too as the UK begins to examine the emerging crisis it faces with regard to social housing in the wake of the tragic events at Grenfell Tower Block in London. To download the report go to this link.

I also attended a public lecture this week which looked at comparing work done on the likelihood of dying within a year after hospital admission in Scotland; with work done in both Denmark and New Zealand. Sounds depressing I know, but it gives you wonderful insight into just how frail our hospital population truly is.

What was really good about this wasn’t just the insight about international frailty it was finding out about the work of Merryn Gott and her team in NZ. Very inspiring, so I am going to suggest taking a look at her research team’s Blog which you can find by clicking on this link

The Te Arai Research Group which she is part of focuses on palliative care and end of life research and are located at the University of Auckland. Her own view of the public lecture in Glasgow that I was at can be found on the group’s blog at this location

Revisiting Deconditioning and Elder Abuse

At the end of April 2017, I posted some information about a campaign aimed at trying to limit the extent of deconditioning syndrome by encouraging older people in hospital to get up and get dressed in their day clothes sooner in order to encourage more walking and safer walking early in rehabilitation called  #EndPJparalysis . In support of this campaign, this month Nursing Older People’s Research Focus page suggests some articles that you might want to read on this topic that support the campaign. Two of them are quite old but one is a recent French study has a strong message for all staff dealing with older people in Hospital. The article is

Sourdet, S., Lafont, C., Rolland, Y., Nourhashemi, F., Andrieu, S. and Vellas, B. (2015). Preventable iatrogenic disability in elderly patients during hospitalisation. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 16(8), pp.674-681.

Which you can access via Science Direct. You can take a look at the abstract here

Two other things of note this month. This week is Carers week and an interesting YouGov poll was conducted on behalf of eight major charities who are calling on the new UK Government and society to do more to recognise the important contribution that unpaid carers make. You can view and download the report called “Building a carer
friendly society” at the Carers Week website 

Finally, yesterday was World Elder Abuse Awareness Day and the WHO have estimated that as many as 1 in 6 older people are affected by abuse. They have created a page in support of this day that includes a link to a report published in Lancet Global Health which you can download and read on elder abuse prevalence at  WHO Elder Abuse Awareness

There Infographic is also great.

Looking back at #DAW2017 and Looking Forward; Anticipatory Care Planning

As my followers will know it was Dementia Awareness Week in Scotland last week so for those of you who got involved here are some things you might like:

• #DAW2017 went viral with a video of PC Marshall visiting a Musical Minds group in Kilmarnock during DAW. The video on the ALZScot Ayrshire page was shared across Scottish media including The Scotsman, The Scottish Sun, The Sunday Post and many more!
• Check out the Dementia Awareness Week gallery over on Facebook and tag yourself.
• To support the week AlzScot also shared a blog a day from Allied Health Professionals who wanted to share who they are and how they CAN help if you are living with dementia. If you can review the blogs by visiting Let’s Talk about Dementia

Last week also saw the publication of ‘My Anticipatory Care Plan’ (ACP). An anticipatory care plan toolkit designed by Healthcare Improvement Scotland.

Antipatory Care Planning ahead can help many people with chronic health problems to plan what they would like their care to look like on a daily basis or help them to plan fro and manage situations which they may find threatening, like sudden hospital admission.  ACP’s are not legally binding in any way (in the UK) and can be updated at any time to reflect changes in the person’s thinking. Remember this is designed to be their plan and it’s entirely up to the person to decide who to share this information with.

For more information about ACP’s and to access the toolkit please click here

You can also download their ACP App for both iPhone and Android when you visit the site. It really is a fabulous resource and although it may originate in Scotland, it could be used anywhere!