Discus Dementia Home Model of Care and Social Community
January 19, 2016
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Dr. Éthelle G. Lord, Founding President of the International Caregivers Association, www.icareassoc.com, discusses improvements she wants to see in dementia care, the main features of the Discus Dementia Home, and how it will help in bringing the improvements. She explains how the Discus Dementia Home Model of Care and Social Community supports individuals living with dementia, and their families and family caregivers. She talks about care partners and how are they trained to support the individuals. She highlights how the social and community support takes account of culture and language of individuals, their families and their family caregivers. She explains the factors to be considered when a Discus Dementia Home is suggested for a particular region. She says where she is considering setting up Discus Dementia Homes and how far along these are, what types of developers or investors she’s looking for, and what help she wants from them. She shares her message about dementia care.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
