Dementia care in hospitals ‘not good enough’
Dementia care in hospitals needs to be dramatically improved to assure people with dementia, their carers and families that they can expect to receive good quality care.
Leading dementia researcher, Brian Draper, claims hospitals aren't designed to adequately address the needs of patients with dementia.
Speaking in Sydney today at Alzheimer’s Australia’s Dementia Care in Hospitals Symposium, Ita Buttrose, Alzheimer’s Australia’s national president, says while the 2012 Aged Care Reforms offered the promise for improvements in primary and acute care, urgent action is required to implement the funding.
“The government invested $39.2 million over five years to improve hospital care for people with dementia, as well as $41.3 million to support general practitioners in making a more timely diagnosis of dementia and expand the scope of the Dementia Behaviour Management Advisory Service (DBMAS) into hospitals and primary care,” Ms Buttrose explains.
“The revision of the National Action Framework on Dementia is also crucial. The fact that the federal, state and territory health ministers have not revised the National Action Framework on Dementia since its termination in 2010, is a salutary warning that we must keep dementia on the political agenda.”
Improving care in hospitals is one part of Alzheimer’s Australia’s goal of making Australia a dementia friendly nation that is able to provide services and support for the nearly 900,000 Australians who will have dementia by 2050, Ms Butrrose adds.
Also speaking at the Symposium, Wilma Robinson, a former carer, will share her experiences of the difficulty in receiving satisfactory care for her mother who had dementia.
“Through my experience, many hospital staff don’t have the necessary knowledge to understand the needs of a person with dementia,” Ms Robinson says.
“Of course, there are improvements that can be addressed by research and policy, but something as simple as compassionate care must be a priority.”
Some of Australia’s leading dementia researchers will take part in the symposium including Brian Draper, Conjoint Professor in the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales.
“Hospitals are not designed to adequately address the needs of people with dementia, and as a result their treatment outcomes are worse than for people without dementia. In part this is due to potentially preventable complications,” Professor Draper says.
“Simple improvements, including better consultation of families in care decisions and early identification of cognitive impairments in patients, can make a significant impact on the acute care experience for someone with dementia.”
