The DETERMIND study’s Dr. Ben Hicks and Dr Laura Hughes are on this week’s NIHR Dementia Researcher podcast.
Talking to the host Megan O’Hare, they discussed dementia research, inequalities in dementia care and the aims of the DETERMIND project.
One of the aims is to find out whether people from certain backgrounds are getting worse dementia care than others. Ben explains how they will do this:
“We’re specifically trying to oversample LGBTQ backgrounds, from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, white working-class backgrounds to try to unpick and tease out the differences in the services that people require and their kind of outlook of what quality of life is.”
By looking at inequalities and other aspects of dementia care, the team hope to find out how to improve dementia care. To do this, DETERMIND researchers will interview hundreds of people with dementia and find out about their experiences. Drawing on her professional experience working in care home, Laura explains why this is important:
“Every single person is individual and some people will experience things differently… processes you have in place in a home could negatively affect one resident while not affecting the other, such as, the different activities that are in the home, somebody might find that too stressing to take part in. Or the approach of staff. I mean I’ve even experienced that in my own personal caring when I worked as a carer, some people liked to be addressed a bit more formally as you know, Mrs Smith or Mr Smith, whereas other people want you to use a nickname for them.”
They also discuss dementia stigma, care homes, early Vs. late diagnosis of dementia and plans for recruiting 900 participants who have just been diagnosed with dementia.
Listen to the full Dementia Researcher podcast or read the transcript.
