Signposting and dementia

On my website, I am working to deliver information about what you can do to delay Dementia or diminish the symptoms into the hands of people affected. It is surprisingly difficult to get that information.  Then you realise that many health and social care practitioners have not had much education about it.

“If as doctors they are going to be useful for families who are affected by someone living with dementia they really need to have more information sooner in order to be able to help”

Talking to medical students last week they told me that they'd had a couple of hours of neuroanatomy and information about the microbiological issues and some of the diseases that cause dementia, but as one of them said "They don't tell you anything about what to do when someone rings you on a Friday night to say they’re at the end of their tether and that their dad is bouncing off the walls in the house in distress."  

If as doctors they are going to be useful for families who are affected by someone living with dementia they really need to have more information sooner in order to be able to help. On the other hand if they don't have time to have those conversations or to learn that information the least they can do is provide the family with the details of the nearest carers’ organisation or Alzheimer's organisation where they live.  To motivate them to get that information, we need to make sure that clinicians know about all the fantastic things that those organisations do. Then all they have to do is remember and share a phone number and signpost patients and families in the right direction.