Nursing

Visiting the Memory Cafe and Other Dementia Care Activities has been developed by Caroline Baker and her colleagues at Barchester Healthcare as a framework for planning and implementing programmes of activity that optimise the wellbeing of people living with dementia.

One of the most useful pieces of advice Matthew Berrisford can share with a colleague working in dementia care is this: whenever confronted with what you perceive to be attention-seeking behaviour, reframe it to yourself as attachment-seeking behaviour.

The importance of choice and the delivery of holistic person centred care is repeatedly highlighted in the literature, both from researchers and policy makers. Yet how can we even begin to deliver person centred care when there is at times a reluctance to open up and initiate these essential conversations?

Bridget Leach believes that humour, when used sensitively, can connect people in a human way and ease tension in the stressful environment of a hospital. And she's not joking.

Falls are a major cause of disability and mortality for older people and the problem is likely to increase with an ageing population. Other consequences range from distress, pain, injury and loss of confidence to complete loss of independence. Dr Kawa Amin shows how simulation training can help staff deal with falls better.

Liz Charalambous reviews the book: Not Forgotten Lives: Felixstowe 2017 by Bertie Wheen, which celebrates the lives of older people living locally in nursing and residential accommodation in Felixstowe. It's not merely an account of lives lived, but a lesson for anyone involved in the care of others, she concludes

There is a growing emphasis on older people and emergency hospital admissions, with frailty often used as a wrap-around term for ‘older people’. Older people with multiple complex comorbidities are a growing number of emergency attendances, hospital stays and admissions.

For many, choosing a care home is based on the CQC report and a visit, where the absence of a smell of urine is taken as a good sign. This level of insight and understanding does not raise expectations of what can and should be achieved for people living and dying in care homes, writes Claire Goodman.

Coming along to her first BGS West Midlands meeting (spring 2017) Cassandra Leese reflects on a welcome reprieve from the madness spewed daily by the tabloids and renewed my faith that the good guys are still out there!