Category Archives: Caregiving – Dementia

5-Week Online Course in Dementia Care and Webinars Afterwards

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Several local support group members sent me a link to an article from yesterday’s “New Old Age” blog in the New York Times.  (I faithfully read this blog as well.)  The article is about an online course in dementia care being offered at no charge.

The course starts on October 14, 2013, runs for 5 weeks, and is anticipated to take 3-5 hours per week of time.  Though the course is designed for healthcare professionals, anyone interested in dementia care may enroll.  “Some background or knowledge about caring for someone with dementia is helpful,” the co-instructors say in an introductory video.  Based on the title, it looks like the focus will be on Alzheimer’s Disease.

Here’s info about the course:

www.coursera.org/course/dementiacare

Care of Elders with Alzheimer’s Disease and other Major Neurocognitive Disorders
Instructors:  Nancy Hodgson, PhD, RN and Laura Gitlin, PhD, both with Johns Hopkins University

This is a state-of-the-art course designed to accommodate the learning needs of health professionals including nurses, social workers, psychologists, occupational and speech therapists, health care administrators and recreational therapists. It is also intended for students who are interested in learning more about dementia care. The 5 units provide an overview of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias and the impact on quality-of-life issues for individuals with dementia and their families. Emphasis will be placed on exploring innovations in care through an ecological model of dementia-care  throughout the trajectory of the disorder

Workload: 3-5 hours/week

Begins:  Oct 14th 2013 (5 weeks long)

At the link above, you can watch a 3-minute video introducing the course.

The “New Old Age” blog post has some helpful details.  See:

newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/online-lessons-in-dementia-management/

The New Old Age: Caring and Coping
Online Lessons in Dementia Management
The New York Times
By Judith Graham
September 5, 2013, 6:00 am

According to the “New Old Age” blog post, each class will be broken into 15-20 minute segments.  During the week of October 21st, Dr. Peter Rabins, author of “The 36-Hour Day,” will talk about assessing caregivers’ needs.  During the week of November 6th, Dr. Gitlin will review non-pharmacologic interventions to treat troublesome behavioral symptoms.  “After the course, Johns Hopkins will offer a series of Web-based seminars to caregivers and health professionals following up in more detail on the issues raised. Potential topics include safety in the home, activities for people with dementia and end-of-life care.”

Both the course and the follow-on webinars sound very worthwhile.  I don’t know if those actively caregiving can fit 3-5 hours per week into their lives, however.  If anyone participates, please share highlights or things you learned so I can share with everyone in our group.

Robin

Hospital Surgery Ratings

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Last week I paid for access to Consumer Reports magazine to get washer/dryer ratings.  While I was at it, I looked to see what else was available.  In the September 2013 magazine, hospitals around the US are rated in terms of “avoiding adverse events in Medicare patients during their hospital stay for surgery.  Specifically, the Ratings are based on the percentage of a hospital’s surgery patients who died in the hospital or stayed longer than expected for their procedure.”

“The analysis looked at Medicare claims data from 2009 through 2011 for patients undergoing 27 categories of common scheduled surgeries.  For each hospital, the results for all procedures are combined into an overall surgery Rating. …[Some] hospitals themselves use this approach to monitor quality.”

The ratings are 5 levels from “Better” to “Worse.”

In Northern and Central California, these hospitals received a “Better” overall surgery rating:  (in alphabetical order)
Enloe Medical Center, Chico
French Hospital, San Luis Obispo
Fresno Heart and Surgical Hospital
Fresno Surgical Hospital
Mercy Medical Center Redding
Oroville Hospital
Sacramento Medical Center
Sequoia Hospital, Redwood City
Shasta Regional Medical Center, Redding
St. Helena Hospital Napa Valley, St. Helena
Sutter Lakeside Hospital, Lakeport
Sutter Surgical Hospital – North Valley, Yuba City
Washington Hospital, Fremont

These hospitals received the next rating lower than “Better”:
Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Berkeley
Alta Bates Summit Medical Center – Summit Campus, Oakland
Bakersfield Heart Hospital, Bakersfield
Clovis Community Medical Center, Clovis
El Camino Hospital, Mountain View
Mercy General Hospital, Sacramento
Mercy Hospitals of Bakersfield, Bakersfield
Methodist Hospital of Sacramento
Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, Grass Valley
St. Elizabeth Community Hospital, Red Bluff
St. Joseph Hospital, Eureka
St. Joseph’s Medical Center, Stockton
Stanislaus Surgical Hospital, Modesto
Sutter Amador Hospital, Jackson
Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital, Auburn
Sutter Davis Hospital, Davis
Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento

See consumerreports.org/hospitalratings for:

  • an article on “How Safe is Your Hospital”  (available at no charge)
  • “Your Safer-Surgery Survival Guide”  (available at no charge)
  • rankings for 2463 hospitals in the US.  Ratings are for 5 procedures including replacement of the hip or knee and angioplasty.  And there are scores for safety, bloodstream infections, avoiding readmissions, drug information, and adverse events.  (there is a fee to see the info)

Robin

“How Do I Manage My Parents’ Money When They Can’t?”

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This post will be of particular interest to adult children caregivers.

This one sentence is a good summary of this blog post:  “The hardest part of managing a parent’s money is figuring out how to make it last.”

This blog post is by Paul Solman, a journalist who covers business and economic news on the PBS NewsHour.  He and his sister gained control over their father’s finances.  He writes about managing his parent’s money when the parent can’t. Wonderfully, the father must’ve had a large nest-egg because his budget was $135K per year.

Similarly, after my brother and I took over our father’s finances, we wanted safe investment vehicles.  We also kept a good chunk of money in cash in case of disaster.  Disaster did strike after Dad had a heart attack, developed pneumonia, and was put on a ventilator.  He lived several months in a care facility that could handle those with vents.  Incredibly, it cost $1K *per day* to live in that care facility.  When he died, we had about $10K left in cash.  A little too close for comfort…

Here’s a link to Paul Solman’s blog post:

www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/08/how-do-i-manage-my-parents-money-when-they-cant.html

How Do I Manage My Parents’ Money When They Can’t?
PBS NewsHour
By Paul Solman
August 2013

This second link includes Paul Solman’s asset allocation plus, more importantly, his step-by-step advise on how to find a financial advisor:

www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/02/how-to-find-a-financial-adviso.html

Robin

Put Local Emergency Phone # in Your Cell Phone

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Though this is of general interest, caregivers especially should take note!

I attended a CPR and first aid class today given by my local Red Cross chapter.  One suggestion I picked up from the class is that all of us should put our city’s local emergency phone number in our cell phones so it’s handy in case of emergency.  It’s always best to call 911 from a land line but if you only have access to your cell phone, calling 911 is not recommended because it’s not really an emergency number if called from a cell phone.  To reach an emergency number on your cell phone, it’s best to call the local emergency phone number.  I live in Menlo Park, so I will program the Menlo Park emergency phone number into my cell phone.  If I’m physically in Palo Alto and call the Menlo Park phone number, my cell phone call can be easily re-routed to the Palo Alto emergency number.

You can find a list here of local emergency phone numbers for cities or communities in the Bay Area:

getice.com/news/emergencynumbers

(That list has some strange alphabetization going on….)

If you live outside the Bay Area, you can look up your city’s local emergency phone number in your phone book.  (I think some people still use those things!)

Robin

Social isolation is deadly (Slate, 8-23-13)

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Many in our support group attended the July 2012 Parkinson’s Disease and Parkinsonism Caregiver Symposium in Foster City.  The keynote speaker, Dr. David Rintell, said that the social isolation caused when a caregiver stays at home 7×24 with their care recipient is as dangerous to us as smoking.  Certainly the same is true for care recipients who stay at home 7×24.

Someone in one of the online support groups I monitor posted an article in Friday’s Slate magazine.  The headline is “Loneliness is Deadly:  Social isolation kills more people than obesity does.”  The article is about the negative effects of social isolation, and about the idea that there’s stigma associated with being lonely.

Here’s a link to the article in Slate:

www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/08/dangers_of_loneliness_social_isolation_is_deadlier_than_obesity.html

MEDICAL EXAMINER :  HEALTH AND MEDICINE EXPLAINED
Loneliness Is Deadly
Social isolation kills more people than obesity does — and it’s just as stigmatized.
Slate
By Jessica Olien
Posted Friday, Aug. 23, 2013, at 12:15 PM

Robin