Dementia

...ba href=/dementia/a/b in care homes are given too many sedatives because staff are not given enough training.

(Haber Saðlýk - 27.03.2006 - 08:04:34 ) yorum yaz arkadaþýna ilet Medical experts found staff regularly resorted to giving drugs to calm people with ba href=/dementia/a/b showing disruptive behaviour.

However, the proportion of residents given sedatives was almost halved when staff were given adequate support and training How have your relatives been treated in care homes?

Tell us in reader comments below More than 400 people in twelve specialist nursing homes in London, Newcastle and Oxford were studied.

"People with ba href=/dementia/a/b are often prescribed anti-psychotic drugs without knowing what causes their behaviour," study leader Professor Clive Ballard said.

"Educating and training staff increases their understanding of patients' needs, decreasing the need to prescribe drugs." The Alzheimer's Society, which supported the study, said often unlicensed anti-psychotics can cause death or strokes.

Chief executive, Neil Hunt, said three quarters of people in care homes have ba href=/dementia/a/b, but only one in 10 of staff have adequate ba href=/dementia/a/b-care training.

"Disruptive or challenging behaviour is distressing for staff, people with ba href=/dementia/a/b and their families," he said.

"However these unlicensed treatments are often not suitable for them and can have adverse effects." ...

...ba href=/dementia/a/b hospitals and rest homes, often in disgraceful conditions and through the night and weekends for no extra pay.” Geoff Annals said in recent negotiations Australian-owned wealthy corporate Guardian Healthcare was forced to up its pay offer of $10 and hour for caregivers to $10.25 because of the increase in the minimum wage, but $10.25 was still a pittance.

“No wonder turnover in the sector is around 40 percent and the average age of the female-dominated workforce is around 47.” Geoff Annals said the two things required to fix low pay in aged care were adequate government funding and wealthy corporate employers dipping into their profits to pay a fair wage.

“An immediate increase in the minimum wage to $12 would certainly also make a difference,” he said.

“But $12 is still too low and this work is worth at least as much as the $16 an hour caregivers get for working in public hospitals.” “Caregivers are amongst the lowest paid New Zealanders and they do one of the hardest jobs, caring for our elderly at their most vulnerable time,” he said.Geoff Annals said it was in the interests of all New Zealanders that caregivers were decently paid.

“That is the only way to ensure we have quality care in our rest homes, private hospitals and ba href=/dementia/a/b care homes,” he said.

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...ba href=/dementia/a/b, are associated with falls.

Cognitive tests could help doctors assess risk for falls; conversely, slow gait could alert them to check for cognitive impairment.

The findings are in the March issue of Neuropsychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Roee Holtzer, PhD, and his colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study of 186 cognitively normal, community-dwelling adults aged 70 and older at New York City's Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Gait speed was tested with and without interference.

In the interference conditions, participants had to walk while reciting alternate letters of the alphabet.

Performance on cognitive tests of executive control and memory, and to a lesser extent of verbal ability, predicted "gait velocity" (walking speed) tested without interference.

For gait velocity tested with interference, only executive control and memory were predictive.

Adding interference to the tests of gait allowed the researchers to better simulate the real world, in which walkers continually deal with distractions.

The authors conclude that executive control and memory function are important when the individual has to walk in a busy environment.

The findings suggest that in old age, walking involves higher-order executive-control processes.

That is, the intersecting cognitive and motor processes involved in walking may both rely on a common brain substrate, or set of structures.

As a result, changes in that substrate w...