Wendy Mitchell writes about a visit to London to promote her new book, One Last Thing: How to live with the end in mind. As the title suggests, the topic is death and in the book Wendy explores dying with dementia, how we prepare for it and talk about it. The London visit is a…...
Resource 1 Gardening for health charity Thrive has produced a garden action pack called Get Gardening Without a Garden. The pack, intended for people with dementia among others, gives tips on experiencing the wellbeing benefits of gardening without having a garden. There are sections on containers, window boxes, house plants and much more. Research by…...
Wendy Mitchell describes heading out to a meeting of York Minds and Voices. These meetings are evidently joyous occasions and Wendy posts a selection of her photos taken on the day to prove it. There is peer support and discussion of the new Admiral Nurse service “Closer to home,”: supporting people to live as well…...
Delayed hospital discharge People living with dementia often experience delayed discharge yet there is little research into their experiences. Using semi-structured interviews with people with dementia, family members and nurses, this study identified three main themes (1) Living and waiting (2) Distress and behaviours and (3) Looking beyond the designation. It identified labelling, a behaviour…...
Blogs Young onset dementia is not all doom and gloom, says Jane in her Memory for Two blog, where she reflects on the strangeness of grief. Her husband Ash was diagnosed with young onset dementia in 2017 and life since then has been an emotional rollercoaster. “Yesterday I was happy from beginning to end of…...
Blogs Beth Britton says she was particularly alarmed by one statistic in the World Alzheimer Report 2022: “Up to 85% of people living with dementia may not receive post-diagnosis care”. As the global scope of this annual report from Alzheimer’s Disease International implies, 85% is the figure for the whole planet and it has to…...
Blogs, resources and book review, Sept/Oct 2022. Journal of Dementia Care 30(5) 39-40. “Should I enter the shark-infested waters of wokeism?” asks George Rook in a recent post. Of course, the answer is “yes” and he writes thoughtfully on the subject. He says he subscribes to the hidden, unconscious prejudice school of thought, in which…...
Christine Proudfoot, a dementia nurse consultant, writes interestingly about pain recognition and management on the Alzheimer Scotland blog Let’s Talk about Dementia. “Pain is under-recognised, under-estimated and under-treated as patients cannot successfully communicate pain,” she writes. “Therefore the evidence suggests that people with advanced dementia continue to experience pain and inadequate care even with clear…...
London housing and care provider Octavia and St Christopher’s Hospice are launching a resource to help care teams promote a better quality of life for people towards the end of their lives. The Better Lives, Better Endings resource is aimed at care teams working in extra care housing and includes a range of tools to…...