Resources support palliative dementia care
International expert Dr Nathan Davies highlights the user-friendly tools he and his team have developed to help professional and informal carers navigate and break down complexities.
Manager uncertainty, complex decision-making and inequality are among the challenges of palliative dementia, an international expert has told Australian Ageing Agenda.
These inequalities are in culture, ethnicity and geography, said Dr Nathan Davies – a professor of ageing, applied health and care research and co-lead of the Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health at the at the Queen Mary University of London.
“Both in the UK but also here in Australia, you’ve obviously got vast land, lots of rural and remote dwelling and older adults living in remote and rural areas. And how we provide palliative dementia care for that growing population, is really challenging,” Dr Davies told AAA on at the International Dementia Conference in Sydney last month.
Dr Davies his team have developed a suite of user-friendly tools (see below), including simple rules of thumb and flow charts, to navigate and break down the complexities to support healthcare professionals and informal carers.
In this interview, Dr Davies discusses the challenges and resources they have developed:
Palliative dementia care tools
The 18-page rule-thumb-guide End of life care for people with dementia has been created for healthcare professionals providing care and support for people with dementia at the end of life. It can be used for training, to support decision-making, and help have discussions with family members and advocates.
The two-page decision guide Talking about eating and drinking for people with severe dementia during hospital stays aims to help family carers and hospital professionals have conversations and make decisions about nutrition and hydration for people with severe dementia during acute hospital admissions.
Other resources for carers family and friends include:
The 52-page guide Eating and drinking in dementia towards the end of life aims to help make decisions, provide care, plan for future care and guide discussions with healthcare professionals.
The 19-page Supporting you to make decisions while caring for someone living with dementia during Coronavirus (COVID19) and beyond decision supports a family member or friend caring for someone living with dementia who may not have the capacity or ability to make their own decisions.
The 52-page decision aid Caring for someone with dementia through to the end of life below is for family members or friends caring for someone with dementia in the later stages, or towards the end of their life to help make some preferences about different types of decisions.
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