In the time Kimberly Linehan sat through a workshop on enabling healthy living for dementia patients, another 600 people across the country were diagnosed with the condition.
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The Albury Wodonga Health occupational therapist was among a group of about 60 representatives from Border organisations at the NSW/ACT Dementia Training Study Centre’s workshops on Wednesday and Thursday.
“The reason we do conferences like this is because everyone who has dementia doesn’t end up getting locked up in an aged care facility,” Mrs Linehan said.
“If we change the way we do things, change something in the environment or how we educate people, we can provide a more enriching life for these people.”
Mrs Linehan said the sessions were particularly focused on the influence environmental factors have on livability and well-being for people with dementia.
“Over-stimulation of too many visual inputs and noise are one of the main key messages I took away,” she said.
“It’s highlighting the things you want people with dementia to see and access – like lounge areas and walking tracks.
“And not to highlight things like staff areas, kitchens and places we don’t want them to be.
“The sort of areas that would be highlighted for safety and OHS everywhere else, it’s possibly not the best thing to be highlighted in our space.
“This would be like fire exit doors, as we don’t want them trying to get out through those doors.”
Mercy Health nurse Virginia Lenahan said for her organisation, it was crucial advice.
“Another thing is colour contrasting – to have things stick out with dark blue writing with light background – little things like that can be taken into account,” she said.
“It’s getting us to think about what our patients with dementia are perceiving, why they might be behaving in a certain manner and how we restrict them without even intending to.
‘We can do something to reduce their stress and anxiety.”
Ms Lenahan said there needed to be more funding for dementia research, particularly as the incidence was set to rise by 600 per cent in the Hume region over the next 34 years.
“We need resources and so do the public … they need to know dementia is not a death sentence,” she said.