Resources to caring for people with dementia
A set of resources to assist health professionals to care for people with dementia was launched on Monday as part of National Palliative Care Week.
A set of resources to assist health professionals to care for people with dementia was launched on Monday as part of National Palliative Care Week.
CareSearch palliative care knowledge network has developed a suite of free online resources that will benefit health professionals and residential aged care staff, plus the patients, residents, and their families who are affected by dementia.
The resources, released as part of National Palliative Care Week, include:
- A dementia search filter: a tested and validated tool that improves clinician efficiency by providing a one touch, quick and effective search of evidence-based dementia literature.
- Clinical evidence pages on dementia: a group of pages that summarise the state of the evidence in dementia, advising the key issues, limitations and contexts for practice, providing links to sources of clinical guidance and ways to find out more.
- Residential Aged Care (RAC) Hub dementia pages: when dementia progresses, the care needs of a person with dementia change. This resource provides clear, easy to understand information on a special page for residents and families, and one for care workers too.
The dementia resources are now freely accessible for use through the CareSearch website.
The dementia search filter was developed with funding provided by HammondCare as part of the Integrated Care Framework for Advanced Dementia (ICF-D), a project within Alzheimer’s Australia’s National Quality Dementia Care Initiative.
As Australia’s population ages, the number of people with dementia is growing. Providing care to the number of people living with dementia is challenging for the health care system and for residential aged care in particular.
There are more than 169,000 people living in residential aged care in Australia, and around 60% of them have a diagnosis of dementia. Dementia is the third leading cause of death in Australia.
CareSearch is funded by the federal government’s Department of Health and Ageing and is managed by Palliative and Supportive Services at South Australian’s Flinders University.
