Making sense of dementia numbers

Recently I’ve been asked by a journalist about how to interpret the trends in recorded numbers of people with dementia. Here are her questions and some of my responses.

First she asked, “What can we make of the apparent increase in numbers of people with dementia in care homes?”

The increase in relative numbers of people in care homes who are counted as having dementia is a result of a number of interwoven causes

- many people in the past would have been there with dementia but didn’t have a formal diagnosis, so as the diagnosis increases it looks like the numbers increased

- once upon a time people went to a care home as a life style choice sometimes, but now people mainly go as a last measure at the end of life, and the closer you are to the end of life, the more likely it is that you have dementia (percentage with dementia increases with age)

- there are more people with dementia in the population (diagnosed or not) because of the ageing demographic

- the reduced stigma about dementia means that people will talk about it/mention it in their data

So she wanted to know, “What difference does this make to the level of care need in homes?”

Residents with dementia often have care needs that are greater than other residents, so that makes them more expensive/more of a staffing burden/more time consuming than other residents.  This is because they have a non-remitting, fatal illness that is characterised by increased dependency with all aspects of living including eating and drinking, personal hygiene, mobility, emotional care, communication needs etc.  That means that if you have a larger percentage of residents with dementia it is more difficult and expensive to provide the care in your care home.

She responded, “OK, then. What does this mean for care workers?”

There is an increased need for care workers to understand dementia care, but this is not a statutory requirement as yet.  Not understanding dementia doesn’t only impact on the resident, but it makes the work of the care worker harder, as they can inadvertently cause adverse incidents that can make their life harder.  For example, understanding why a resident with dementia resists personal hygiene care, and knowing some top tops for dealing with that, can save you having a time-consuming and upsetting battle in the bathroom every single day.  There are parallels in other aspects of daily living. 

I love the questions they ask! Sharing the answers with you is all about getting the conversation going…..