My talk for the Community Hospitals Association on dementia on May 13th 2016 in Bristol

Bath-Community-Hospital-Photo

Community Hospitals Association
Challenging Times
Improving the experience of dementia care through community hospitals

Friday 13 May 2016 : 1.50 pm

Dr Shibley Rahman, Fellow of the England Centre for Practice Development, Canterbury, UK.

There are about 800,000 people living with dementia currently in the UK. With no effective longlasting treatment as yet, the policy in England is focused as in many jurisdictions from a perspective of living better with a long term condition. A major flaw in English policy, however, is the lack of real substance to the notion of ‘post diagnostic support’, and I will argue that a better approach will be promotion of people living with dementia as far as possible with independent lives. There is an universal entitlement to health, and for me community hospitals are crucial in offering local, personal, care. There is now an overwhelming case for people with dementia to receive right care in the right place, at the right time, in the right way. Lessons are nonetheless to be learnt from how dementia care is delivered in acute large centralised hospitals, though this type of care is important too.

Much can be done to improve the overall experience of dementia care through community hospitals. I will explain the rationale behind ‘dementia friendly environments’ as a genuine success in contemporary English policy. I will also draw attention to the need to reduce inappropriate antipsychotic prescribing, the need to care for carers, and emphasise how specialist nurses in the community are especially important for continuity of care and palliative care approaches. I will draw attention to signposting the critical need to “reframe” post-diagnostic care in English policy as through ‘enablement’. I will explain why is particularly timely with the development of ‘new models of care’, and worldwide initiatives such as Buurtzorg. I will conclude with the need to promote “rights”, in relation to community based rehabilitation, and why I feel an expansion in capacity of community hospitals is so essential now in English dementia policy.