What my Grandma means to say

January 17, 2012
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley

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Guest Information

Episode Description

JC Sulzenko, ”JC”, is the author of a one-act play about dementia for children, "What my grandma means to say". Kristen Irvine is a Personal Support Worker currently supporting her grandmother who has Alzheimer’s disease. JC explains how she came to write the play. Kristen describes the things she’s learned about Alzheimer’s disease by helping her Grandma. JC reads the play, and tells us about the young people it’s written for. She talks about audience reactions. Kristen describes her reaction JC shares her plans for taking the play to more audiences, and Kristen provides suggestions for reaching more young people and families. They discuss the value of the play to families, adults and healthcare professionals. They say what the two most important things are that need to be done to encourage more young people to help family members with Alzheimer’s disease, and say who should do these things. They give their messages to young people with a grandparent with Alzheimer’s disease.

Family Caregivers Unite!

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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.



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