HOSPITAL staff are to be given more training to treat people with dementia with dignity and respect, as well as ensuring they get better care while in hospital and are returned home more promptly.
Alex Neil, Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, will today announce an updated National Dementia Strategy when he speaks at the Alzheimer Scotland's Dementia Connections Conference in Glasgow.
The strategy will include an action plan to ensure people with dementia are treated with dignity and respect during hospital stays.
More than 41,000 people were diagnosed with dementia in Scotland in 2011-12, according to the Scottish Government. Alzheimer Scotland believes 84,000 have the disease. In 2007 the charity estimated dementia was costing more than £1.5 billion a year and that would almost double by 2031.
Last October the watchdog Healthcare Improvement Scotland issued a damning report on the attitudes of staff on acute wards in eight hospitals to older patients, citing examples of patients being addressed using patronising language or having their dignity compromised.
Dementia campaigners warned that it is not enough for hospitals to have specialist wards for dementia patients as up to 25% of patients in the average hospital have dementia and attitudes must be addressed in surgical, accident and emergency and other wards.
However, the first national dementia strategy has already seen more than 300 dementia champions and Alzheimer Scotland dementia nurses placed in health boards across Scotland and promoted skills development for all health and social care staff.
The new hospital action plan aims to prevent people with dementia going into hospital unnecessarily, ensure they get better care when in hospital and are helped home as quickly as possible once they are ready to leave. Mr Neil will argue that much progress has been made but that the new strategy will further improve diagnosis rates and transform the quality of post-diagnostic support.
He said: "We've already seen huge progress since we made dementia a national priority in 2007. Currently 64% of Scots are getting a diagnosis, significantly better than other parts of the UK.
"Everyone diagnosed from April 1 this year is entitled to a named support worker to help them and their families understand the illness, manage its symptoms and plan for future care."
He said this had been described as a "world leading" commitment by Alzheimer Scotland.
Mr Neil added: "However, there is still more to do, including improving care in general hospitals. We will support health boards, the Alzheimer Scotland Dementia Nurse Consultants and the 300-plus Dementia Champions now trained to ensure that, when admission to acute general hospital is unavoidable, people with dementia receive the dignity, respect and care they're entitled to."
Caroline Brown, a member of the National Dementia Carers Action Network, said: "It is vital that hospital staff understand the experience of people with dementia in hospital.
"It means treating the person with dementia with dignity and respect. It means talking to them, not talking past them at family members."
It is also important that doctors and nurses listen to family members and partners, she added: "Recognising that those unpaid carers may not be medical experts, but we are experts when it comes to that person and their experience of dementia.
"We live with it every day."
Henry Simmons, chief executive of Alzheimer Scotland, said: "We have campaigned for many years to improve standards of care for people with dementia in acute hospitals and we have made significant investment in driving this forward, not least our Specialist Dementia Nurse programme which is now jointly funded by the Scottish Government.
"It is vital that we build on the strengths of our work in Scotland to date and implement a dementia specific improvement plan for each hospital as quickly as possible.
"The human cost for people with dementia and their families is simply not acceptable.
"The financial cost of inaction is also not acceptable."
Other areas of the strategy to be announced today will include continuing to improve the skills of the dementia workforce and improving community services to offer better and earlier support, so people with dementia can live well in their own home for longer.
Hospitals will be told to improve the way they prepare patients with dementia for admission and discharge and the way they involve families, friends and carers.
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