Dementia Beyond Disease -- New Ways of Thinking
June 24, 2014
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Dr. Al Power, www.alpower.net, is an internist and geriatrician, clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester, and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians / American Society for Internal Medicine. He talks about his career, experience with family caregiving, and his book, ‘Dementia Beyond Disease’. He discusses the challenges dementia creates in the lives of individuals, the effectiveness of medical care, medications, and holistic approaches, and the burdens created for family caregivers. He explains the new approaches he advocates for meeting the challenges, including loss of memory and the ability of to make safe and appropriate decisions. He says what more he would like to do and see done by healthcare and social systems to promote the new approaches he advocates for meeting the challenges to enhancing the lives and wellbeing of individuals living with dementia. He shares his message for family caregivers with family members living with dementia.
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.
