Category Archives: dementia

David Behan, Director General for Social Care talks about the Prime Minister’s challenge on dementia

March 29, 2012   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia

The Prime Ministers’s challenge on dementia

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D-NKSMVYHc&feature=youtu.be

David talks about the Prime Minister’s challenge on dementia to society about how we respond to people that have dementia to support them to live the lives they want to live.

Key points

The Prime Minister as challenged us all to:

  • raise the awareness around dementia
  • develop the capability and capacity of staff working with people with dementia
  • increase the numbers of people diagnosed with dementia (only 40% of people with dementia receive a formal diagnosis)
  • ensure the quality of services is to a high standard
  • ensure a research programme can be conducted.

The three workstreams

  1. raising awareness
  2. improving quality of care and health services for people with dementia
  3. set an ambitious program for development of research into dementia
  4. http://davidbehan.dh.gov.uk/
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‘You can’t teach people compassion’

March 27, 2012   Carers, dementia, Older care

PM hits back as Strictly’s Arlene Phillips says nurses ignored dementia patients

  • David Cameron says funding for research into dementia is to be doubled by 2015
  • One in three over-65s struck down by condition
  • Bonus payments will be made to GPs who diagnose and refer patients

By Sophie Borland and Jason Groves

PUBLISHED: 21:01, 25 March 2012 | UPDATED: 23:24, 26 March 2012
David Cameron was yesterday forced to admit that NHS nurses lack compassion after being confronted by former Strictly Come Dancing judge Arlene Phillips.

The 68-year-old told the Prime Minister how she had witnessed  nurses walking past dementia patients ‘as if they didn’t exist’ when visiting her mother-in-law in hospital over Christmas.

And she revealed how the 84-year-old, who does not suffer from dementia,  had been kept on the same ward in  Hereford Hospital as several Alzheimer’s patients, many of whom were ‘repeatedly calling out for nurses’.

Mrs Phillips, a supporter of the Alzheimer’s Society, who has spoken movingly in the past about her father’s  battle with dementia, claimed ‘every nurse in that ward walked up and down as if they didn’t exist’.

Confronting Mr Cameron during a question and answer session at a conference in London yesterday, she asked: ‘How will you train nurses to care?’

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Nationwide dementia screening to tackle ‘crisis’ among elderly

March 26, 2012   Cancer, dementia

The first nationwide NHS screening programme to identify dementia patients earlier is to be launched to battle Britain’s “crisis” among the elderly.

7:30AM BST 26 Mar 2012

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said there was a “moral imperative” to diagnose sufferers earlier so they could receive better treatment.

The announcement comes as David Cameron warns today that the dementia crisis facing the country is on a par with high rates of HIV and cancer in previous decades.

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