- Title
- Optimising diagnosis and post-diagnostic support for people living with dementia: geriatricians’ views
- Creator
- Mansfield, Elise; Bryant, Jamie; Nair, Balakrishnan R.; Zucca, Alison; Pulle, Ranjeev Chrysanth; Sanson-Fisher, Rob
- Relation
- NHMRC.APP1095078 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1095078
- Relation
- BMC Geriatrics Vol. 22, no. 143
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12877-022-02814-0
- Publisher
- BioMed Central
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- BACKGROUND: Providing a timely and accurate diagnosis of dementia and delivering appropriate support following a diagnosis are essential to allow individuals and their families to plan for the future. Recent studies suggest that provision of diagnosis and post-diagnosis support is suboptimal. This study explored geriatricians' views about strategies to improve quality of care across these domains. METHODS: An anonymous online survey of geriatricians and advanced trainees in one Australian state was conducted. An Expert Advisory Group of geriatricians, behavioural scientists and consumers proposed strategies to improve quality of care in relation to diagnosis and post-diagnosis support for people with dementia, which formed the survey items. Potential strategies were guided by, but not limited to, dementia and chronic care guidelines. Participants were asked the extent to which they agreed that implementing each of the proposed strategies would improve the quality of dementia care. RESULTS: Of 59 participants (response rate 42%), all agreed that improving accessibility of geriatricians would improve the accuracy and timeliness of diagnosis. Over 90% were supportive of strategies to improve capacity of general practitioners to accurately diagnose dementia. Between 97-100% agreed that information provided following diagnosis should encompass symptom progression, treatments, psychological supports, and advance care planning. Just over two-thirds thought that life expectancy should be discussed at this time. There were high levels of support for strategies already included in existing dementia care guidelines, however geriatricians also agreed with a range of possible strategies not currently included in guidelines. CONCLUSIONS: Geriatricians perceive that timeliness and accuracy of dementia diagnosis may be improved by increasing access to geriatricians and training general practitioners in diagnosing dementia. They also believe it is appropriate to provide information at the time of diagnosis across a comprehensive range of areas, including potentially sensitive topics such as advance care planning. Future studies should explore the views of other groups of health care providers and consumers about these approaches. The strategies proposed should be considered for inclusion in future dementia care guidelines.
- Subject
- dementia; Alzheimer's disease; geriatricians; health care providers; quality of care; guidelines; SDG 4; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1483604
- Identifier
- uon:51144
- Identifier
- ISSN:1471-2318
- Rights
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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