Congratulations to our first ever dementia intermodule project winner!
Event reportsWe want to offer huge congratulations to Dr Michelle McCarthy and her colleague, occupational therapist (OT) Clare O'Donnell, for their outstanding project developing a frailty memory service.
Michelle, a community consultant geriatrician, developed her service with colleague Clare after recognising that their frailer patients often struggled to access memory services. The developed a diagnostic pathway and piloted a monthly frailty memory multidisciplinary team meeting supported by the psychiatrist,geriatrician and specialist OT. The pathway includes signposting to post-diagnostic support provided by Age UK.
After seeing 35 patients in this frailty memory service during the pilot, they have found that there is a higher rate of dementia amongst their frailer patients, and are looking to develop a business case to continue providing this new service.
Our congratulations also go to our two runner-up projects on prescription reviews to reduce inappropriate medications including anticholinergics, and sensory impairment self-screening, respectively.
Consultant Dr Murudappa Bhattad, with colleague William McKeown, implemented a prescription review of medications for in-patients with dementia to assess any inappropriate medication which might adversely affect their cognition and amend their medications accordingly.
Consultant psychiatrist Dr Siobhan Collins, alongside Dr Yetunde Faluyi, an old age psychiatrist, developed a survey around sensory impairment for all people over 65 in their clinic to complete regardless of their cognitive state, to understand where people experienced visual and hearing impairment and to signpost the to onward services, reducing this risk for dementia.
These projects and 16 others were all developed as part of our 7th Dementia MasterClass - the first to include an intermodule project. We were incredibly impressed by the range of work to come out of the course, from assessing cognition to screening for delirium, developing pathways to improving post-diagnostic support.
Head of Faculty, Prof Iracema Leroi, said:
'There was a fantastic output in terms of quality and number of projects resulting from this Dementia MasterClass. Most delegates followed a really robust audit or quality improvement methodology.
Many delegates said that, without the Academy structure and support, they wouldn't have carried out this work - which demonstrates how the course can have a real impact on individuals with dementia.'
We want to congratulate each delegate for the work they have done in improving services for people with dementia over the past six months. You can learn from all of their projects in our dedicated space online.
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