Tag Archives: alzheimers
‘You can’t teach people compassion’
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?’
Dementia research funding set to rise to £66m by 2015
Care Services Minister Paul Burstow: “Making dementia a national priority… is the way we can tackle this”
Funding for research into dementia is to be doubled to £66m by 2015 to try to make the UK a world leader in the field, David Cameron will announce.
The prime minister is expected to say in a speech that the level of diagnosis, understanding and awareness of dementia is “shockingly low”.
Dementia is thought to affect around 800,000 people in the UK, with the cost to society estimated at £23bn.
