Tag: risks

Advocacy, Real life, Toward better care, You said it!

it’s sad

My Alzheimer's Story

Natalia Loskutova, Director of Evaluation at American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), knows what she’s talking about. Her professional interests include translational research, neuroscience, and aging especially in the relationship between cognitive and physical decline in dementia. Her current research interest is in cognitive and non-cognitive changes in early/pre-symptomatic Alzheimer’s’ disease, disease predecessor, early detection and disease progression.

After reading “against my wishes and against her will” Loskutova commented: 

“It is very sad that despite story after story of the victims of this approach and plentiful research evidence of the harms resulting from the use of several medication classes in persons with dementia that these practices still exist and, most disappointingly, are accepted by many.

You’re right Natalia, it is sad.
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“You said it!” is a place to discover informed comments, inspiring thoughts, short stories, good ideas, provocative opinions, quotable quotes and noteworthy snippets from across my worldwide network. 

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Advocacy, Real life, Toward better care, You said it!

don’t hide behind safety

My Alzheimer's Story

Scottish social care trainer Derek O’Hagan saw the value in the videos documenting Mom’s experience with “hidden” physical restraints and is now using them to give care home staff a different perspective on fall risks and using restraints. He says the outcome has been “very positive.”

O’Hagan also says: 

“I believe we hide behind the word safety, I don’t always blame staff but more so the situation, support for older people is extremely underfunded and my opinion undervalued. The video of your mum is not even subtle, it is full on restraint that will be dressed up as ‘safety’ or ‘falls risk’. What we don’t do is talk about how we could make it safe; we just say it is not safe and accept it. Care for the elderly needs to change, here in Scotland I have written to our government asking how this can be done, and when I deliver training in care homes this is an area I focus on. I personally think large care homes should be closed and smaller more person-centred homes opened, even though it may be slightly less cost-effective.”

Spot on Derek!
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“You said it!” is a place to discover informed comments, inspiring thoughts, short stories, good ideas, provocative opinions, quotable quotes and noteworthy snippets from across my worldwide network. 

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Advocacy, Real life, Toward better care, You said it!

coy gupta says: what goes around comes around

My Alzheimer's Story

Entrepreneur and data mining guru Coy Gupta has strong opinions. And he doesn’t pull any punches. My post “the lies added insult to injury” touched a nerve when he read it.

Here’s what Gupta had to say in a LinkedIn comment: 

“Nursing facilities often use drugs like Thorazine and Haldol to medicate patients. Wait, my mistake, Ooops! Sorry care facilities, I forgot to mention you also use various cocktails of various meds like Ambien and Lunesta to make them sleepy. Ha! So life is good for the care facility. Patients sleep, wake up, get medicated, sit there drooling all day, eat or get fed, then take pills and go to sleep again. Repeat 365 days of the year and you can manage double the number of patients with half the staff and one crooked doctor. Oh wait, the doctor is board certified, has 20 years experience and not all the smarts you might think. Oh wait, you want to argue with him or her? Good luck with getting an appointment. If your loved one dies, oh well they were old, so what did you expect? Go to court? Good luck with that too. The damages (if you can prove them), are based on the life expectancy of the deceased. Hmmmm. I wonder if we have a problem? You think the health department can solve it? Highly unlikely. And that’s good news for the doctors and staff that drug and mistreat patients. The only saving grace at this point is the abusers will eventually they’ll end up in the system they’re a part of now, and receive the same unacceptable treatment they give others. But uh oh — so will the rest of us!”

Sorry to say I think you’re right Coy.
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“You said it!” is a place to discover informed comments, inspiring thoughts, short stories, good ideas, provocative opinions, quotable quotes and noteworthy snippets from across my worldwide network. 

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