Are Hospitals and Care Homes Failing Those with Dementia?

Are you caring for a loved one with dementia? You don't have to figure this out all on your own. Welcome to Truth, Lies Alzheimer's, the show that helps you reimagine a new relationship with your loved one, a relationship a little more free of stress and anxiety. Join host Lisa Skinner and her 30+ years of experience as she guides you on a new path to a better relationship with those you care for. Here's Lisa.

Hi everybody, welcome back to another new episode of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host. I've got some pretty profound information to share with all of you today, and I think it's really important. I always want to be very transparent with what I discover out there in the world that's truthful and honest and really draws a realistic picture of life out there, especially when it involves our loved ones and the people that we care for who live with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. We have to be their advocates because due to their cognitive impairment, they're no longer able to really do what needs to happen to completely protect themselves. It's up to us. So I'm bringing you this information today that I think is really, really important for everybody to know. And And once again, I tripped over another article. This is written by Dr. Gomi. He's a neuropsychiatrist, an engineer. He has been a health tech founder 4 times in his career. And this guy has treated, has diagnosed in his career, his medical career, over 1,000 dementia cases, and he just is continuously staying on top of what's current and what's accurate. And there's so much misinformation and disinformation out there that it's really important to me to filter all of that stuff out and bring everybody the truth. So Dr. Gomi has visited 47 nursing homes just in the past year, and he found that almost every single one of them was failing the dementia patients. This is what he found. This is what he saw. And he said, "The problem starts the moment you walk in. The staff rushing between 30-plus residents, alarms beeping constantly, confused patients calling for help that's 20 minutes away. But the real failures are systematic." What's broken? The dementia training is virtually nonexistent. Aides get as little as 1-hour training total on memory care in some states. I know that the requirement is in California is much more than that. I think it's at least 8 hours, but I'm also aware that it's as little as 1-hour training total in some states. So, um, this is very consistent with what I'm aware of, that most of the staff don't understand behavioral symptoms that show up as a result of the damage being done to the brains. That's consistent with what I have come to realize. That agitation gets treated with restraints, not based on the root causes, like what triggers the agitation. Uh, number 2, what he discovered and observed was that the way medication is managed in these institutional settings is dangerous. Patients on 15+ medications with absolutely no review. Anti-cholinergic burden is ignored completely. The behavioral issues are resolved by giving more pills, not less pills. That the environments are designed for a efficiency and not brain impairment. Fluorescent lighting disrupts the sleep cycles. Noise levels trigger anxiety and confusion. The layout of these neighborhoods, of these communities, create more wanderings and falls. They're not designed properly. That the families are kept in the dark. No communication is transmitted about cognitive changes that are observed and recorded between the residents, the patients, or— and the family members. Care plans are written, and then forgotten. The quality of the metrics focused on paperwork and not the outcomes. And the saddest part? That he met incredible individual caregivers doing their best in broken systems. One aide knew every resident's favorite song. A nurse spent her break painting nails with a woman who'd forgotten her own name. But the long of the short here, the bottom line, is that heroic individuals who do work within these organizations can't fix these systemic failures. What needs to change? These are the main things: better staffing ratios, dementia-specific training, environmental designs that support brain health, reimbursement systems that reward quality of life and that are not just keeping people alive. He's adamant. And I feel as strongly about this as he does. Our loved ones with dementia deserve better than just institutional survival. And he completes this article by saying, the average hairstylist gets 1,500 hours of training. The average nursing aide caring for dementia patients? As little as 1 hour. I'm left speechless with these current findings. So I think it's important for everybody to be aware of these things. So if you are looking at an institutional environment for your loved one living with dementia or skilled nursing, At least these are things to be aware of so you can vet the choice that you're considering. This other doctor named Dr. Lord also recently published information about hospital-to-home transitions. And this is what she has revealed: hospital-to-home transitions fail seniors with dementia and multiple conditions, according to this study that she is talking about. This is very consistent with what Dr. Gomi just published. So this is just supporting— they're supporting each other in their findings. Hospital-to-home transitions for older adults with dementia and multiple chronic conditions face major challenges due to systemic healthcare gaps. Dr. Gomi just said that. According to a comprehensive review published in BMC Geriatrics, The study analyzed 70 documents to understand how these critical transitions work for patients and multiple long-term conditions and dementia. Healthcare professionals, including geriatric specialists, frequently lack adequate dementia training, and this is what this research revealed. According to the review, This knowledge gap affects providers' ability to identify and diagnose dementia, which the review links to poor discharge planning and higher readmission risk. The review found that limited dementia knowledge made it difficult for many providers to create a hospital-to-home care plan or manage coexisting conditions that these patients may have. The analysis found no standardized approach for documenting or sharing dementia diagnosis information between healthcare providers. Different electronic health record systems and non-standardized terminology create these barriers. With healthcare professionals working outside of geriatric care, often unaware of patients' dementia diagnosis. And this has been revealed according to the findings. Also, the findings revealed that family caregivers They face significant challenges during these transitions. The research actually showed that 82% of unpaid caregivers suffer mental health challenges. They often assume medical responsibilities such as administering treatments, monitoring blood sugars, giving insulin injections without without receiving the proper training. The study associated the situation with increased emotional distress for these caregivers and a higher risk of hospital readmission for the patients when care needs went unmet. According to the findings, hospital admission and discharge procedures often prioritize the primary diagnosis and overlook dementia symptoms such as cognitive decline and behavioral issues. The report found care plans often prioritize the admission diagnosis and fail to integrate dementia with the management of other chronic conditions. The study emphasizes that successful transitions require system-level changes, including standardized reporting, single points of contact for care coordination, dementia-specific training for healthcare professionals, and tailored interventions addressing both patient and caregiver needs. The source for this information is being credited to Donna Schreier of McKnight's Long Term News, and the source is https://link.in/g8 3, F as in Frank, P as in Paul, M as in Mary, R, R. And as all of you know, I have been working in the elder care industry. I've been exposed to it. I've been in the weeds of it for 30 years now. And these are things that I have personally observed over the many decades that I have been involved. These are recent findings, the publications, the studies, and it does not look like, to me, that things really have changed all that much. And this is a very sad state of affairs as far as I am concerned. And that's the one thing that I realized a long time ago and why I'm bringing this information to all of you is these very things that these two doctors have revealed to us in these posts, in these articles. And to remind everybody that based on the World Health Organization and all of these Alzheimer's organizations that by the year 2050— that's 25 years from now, it's going to be here before we blink our eyes— the number of people who are expected to develop Alzheimer's disease by that date, by 2050, or between now and then, is expected to triple. If a cure or treatment is not found? Does it sound like we're prepared for the number of people who will be living with Alzheimer's disease and the other 200 known brain diseases that cause dementia? Don't forget, these are terminal illnesses. Something has got to change. It's increasing awareness and educating people, that I know, but it's not happening fast enough. So hopefully any of you listening to this show, The Truth Lies in Alzheimer's Show, will be a little more prepared than people who don't have access to this information. And that's what I really want. That's what I've dedicated my life I don't want families to have to be caught completely unprepared for a dementia diagnosis. Nobody signs up for that. So being prepared, being educated, being well-informed is going to end up being— giving you a huge leg up to people who are completely blindsided and caught off guard. By a dementia diagnosis, or for those of you who care for people who are living with dementia, as you heard me say in these two articles by two different doctors, that the findings are that most people lack serious training in how to care for people living with a brain disease. So there you have it. And this will conclude today's episode for the Truth, Lies Alzheimer's show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host. Keep tuning in because I'm going to be continuing to bring you this information week after week after week and keep you up to date on the honest truth and the updated, most recent findings so we all can stay informed and be more prepared if it strikes our families. So have a great rest of your week. Stay safe, stay healthy. Thanks again for spending part of your day here with me, and I look forward to you coming back and sharing another, uh, episode with more information. Next week. Take care. Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to Truth, Lies Alzheimer's. We hope you found something in today's episode that helps. We understand that caring for a loved one with dementia can be the challenge of a lifetime, but you don't have to do it alone. If you're ready for exclusive access to even more great content and resources, Head on over to Facebook and join Lisa Skinner's Minding Dementia support group. We're a community of like-minded caregivers, and we're here to help.