Agenda

CONFERENCE DAY ONE
Thursday 23rd February 2012

Day One | Day Two

8:30 Registration and coffee

9:00 Opening remarks from the Chair

9:10 Aged-Care Reform: What does it mean for Dementia Care in Australia?

• Exciting prospect of aged care reform focussed on the needs of older Australians
• Main elements of the Productivity Commissions final report on Caring for Older Australians have the potential to improve access, quality and choice for consumers
• Important implementation issues remain to be addressed if the needs of individuals with dementia and their families are to be met by the reforms
• Need for a Dementia Action Plan to underpin the reforms in integrating action on aged care and health care

Glenn Rees, Chief Executive Officer, Alzheimer's Australia

9:50 Education and Culture Change Approaches to Improving Residential Care for People with Dementia

• Rationale for work to improve the care of persons with dementia living in residential care
• Results of an RCT of an educational intervention for general practitioners and care staff: the DIRECT study
• Results of a survey of organisational culture in a residential care facility
• Results of piloting a culture change intervention in residential care: the TOrCCh study

Christopher Beer, Geriatrician & Clinical Pharmacologist at Royal Perth Hospital and Associate Professor, Western Australian Centre for Health and Ageing, University of Western Australia

10:30 Morning Tea

11:00 Discontinuing Antipsychotics in Dementia: The Evidence Base

• Antipsychotics, though prescribed excessively, have modest benefits for behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD)
• Discontinuation trials have been overwhelmingly positive, in favour of antipsychotic discontinuation in patients with modest or no BPSD
• Severe BPSD symptoms still most likely warrant antipsychotic use
• The challenge remains in translating this evidence base into routine clinical practice

Bradley Ng, Consultant Psychiatrist, Older Persons Mental Health, Gold Coast Health Service District

11:40 Dementia and Environmental design

• The evidence base for environmental design principles
• Ten principles of design
• Assessing environments for people with dementia
• The relationship between the quality of the environment and the quality of life of people with dementia in residential care

Richard Fleming, Professorial Fellow University of Wollongong, Director, NSW/ACT Dementia Training Study Centre

12:20 Lunch

1:20 Assistive Technology for People with Dementia: Opportunities and Challenges

• Attitudes of people with dementia towards using technology
• Selecting possible applications and their purpose - whose needs are you meeting?
• Principles of person-centred care - the fear of losing contact with people
• Gaps in our knowledge - lack of funding for research, lack or recognition of the potential
• Building seamless models of services supported by AT

Barbara Horner, Director, Centre for Research on Ageing, Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute

2:00 Sexuality and Dementia: A Proactive Approach

• Develop a better understanding about dementia and the impact it has on a person's sexuality
• Explore a broad, all encompassing definition of 'sexuality'
• Appreciate that a person's sexuality, expressed in one form or another, is a birth to death continuum and does not change with a diagnosis of dementia
• Describe how care staff's own personal beliefs, attitudes, values and knowledge base influence their response to a person living with dementia's sexual needs
• Describe factors which proactively create an environment conducive for the person and care staff to discuss intimate issues
• Appreciate the importance of obtaining both a life profile and a sexual history as the basis for planning person centred care
• Demonstrate how a negative 'reactive' approach can be converted into a more positive 'proactive' course of action that will support a person living with dementia maintain their sexuality in a way that will enhance their quality of living

Elaine White, Educator, Alzheimer's Australia

2:40 Afternoon Tea

3:10 Quality Dementia Care and the Role of Clinical Leadership: A Way Forward

• The evidence identifying the importance of aligning leadership and management abilities for middle managers in aged care to contemporary views of middle managers as clinical leaders
• The core elements of the aged care specific clinical leadership qualities framework (ACLQF-CLINICAL) for middle managers
• The process of building aged care workforce capacity through a clinical leadership program in aged care (CLiAC) program
• The process of establishing evidence for the role of clinical leadership in influencing workforce and care outcomes using a cluster randomised controlled trial

Yun-Hee Jeon, Associate Professor, Sydney Nursing School, University of Sydney

3:50 Victorian Initiatives Supporting Best Practice in the Provision of Care for Older Hospitalised Patients with Dementia

• Improving Care for Older People initiative
• Development of Best care for older people everywhere - The toolkit
• Resources and tools contained within the Dementia domain of The toolkit
• Implementation of the Dementia domain of The toolkit in Victorian health services

Katherine Utry, Senior Project Officer, Ageing & Complex Care, Department of Health, Victoria

4:30 IIR invites all speakers and delegates to an informal networking drinks reception

CONFERENCE DAY TWO
Friday 24th February 2012

Day One | Day Two

9:00 Opening remarks from the Chair

9.10 Shared-care Assessment and Management of Dementia in the Community - the Newcastle Model

• The principles of assessment of dementia
• The importance of a team approach to assessment
• The goals of dementia management in the community
• The importance of case management
• Case-studies demonstrating the success of this shared-care approach
• The resources required for a best-practice model

John Ward, Conjoint Associate Professor & Clinical Director, Aged Care & Rehabilitation Network, Hunter New England Health

9.50 Reducing Antipsychotic Use in Residential Aged Care Settings

• At least 50% of all residents in residential aged care have a diagnosis of dementia
• Antipsychotics are frequently prescribed to manage behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia
• Using person-centred care practices reduces the need for antipsychotic drugs
• Family involvement in care is essential

Kaye Ervin, Nurse Practitioner Candidate, Cobram District Health & Lecturer, University of Melbourne, Rural Health Academic Network

10:30 Morning Tea

11:00 Attachment in Older Adults: Implications for Dementia Care

• Attachment in older adults
• Dementia as trauma
• Proximity seeking and separation/loss
• Links to current behavioural conceptions
• Examination of attachment as explanatory model for dementia behaviour

Bernie McCarthy, Psychologist, McCarthy Psychology Services

11.40 Overcoming GP Barriers to Dementia Diagnosis

• Overall world-wide, GPs make a diagnosis of dementia in only about 50% of those with mild or early dementia.
• Results from GP interviews conducted with 40 GPs across 3 states as part of a recent NHMRC randomised controlled trial, including:
  - Reasons why GPs did not make a conclusive diagnosis of dementia in the early stages
  - How they communicate about dementia and whether or not they would use the "D" word
  - Ways in which consumers, carers and other health professionals can work with GPs to overcome these barriers

Dimity Pond, Professor, Discipline of General Practice, School of Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle

12:20 Lunch

1:20 Communication Disorders in Alzheimer's Disease: What goes, what declines, what is maintained and why?

• Communication and its relation to cognition and speech areas affected by dementias
• Language analysis and breaking down conversations in persons with dementia
• Psycholinguistics and alzheimer's disease
• The use of anti-dementia, cognitive enhancing medications and the effect on speech and language in Alzheimer's patients

Ian Thompson, Speech Pathologist, Inner East Community Health Service

2:00 Young Onset Dementia: Frontotemporal Dementia and the Family Burden

• Understanding the impact of FTD on spouses and children
• The role of disease progression on carer burden
• Discerning factors behind carer burden
• Efficacy of a structured program for carers: Australian results

Eneida Mioshi, NHMRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow & UNSW Conjoint Lecturer, Neuroscience Research Australia

2:40 Afternoon Tea

3:10 Issues in Providing a Palliative Approach to Care for People with Dementia Residing in Aged Care Facilities

• Dementia in context
• Dementia: what is it and dementia trajectories
• Knowledge deficits in the field - what the literature says
• The imperative for a palliative approach to dementia care
• Our Research - reporting on dementia knowledge deficits among RACF staff and family members
• Our Research - reporting on capacity deficits in palliative dementia care provision
• Implications for work on addressing knowledge and capacity deficits
• Findings of our translational research to address knowledge deficits
• Conclusion and recommendations

Andrew Robinson, Professor of Aged Care Nursing, School of Nursing & Midwifery, University of Tasmania, Royal Hobart Hospital & Co-Director, Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, Menzies Research Institute
& Fran McInerney, Professor, Aged Care, School of Nursing & Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne

4:10 Closing Remarks from the Chair

4:20 Close of Conference

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