Great Western Ambulance Service to improve services for dementia patients (From Gazette Series)

Great Western Ambulance Service to improve services for dementia patients

11:31am Friday 5th March 2010

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IMPROVED services are on the cards for dementia patients using the Great Western Ambulance Service.

A strategy has been drawn up looking at ways the service can provide better care to most of its most vulnerable patients.

Tips will now be given to paramedics on how best to communicate with dementia sufferers, medications likely to be in use and a range of characteristics to look for in dementia patients.

"While dementia is high on the national agenda for improving care and patient and carer experience, it presents very different challenges to ambulance clinicians as the condition itself is invariably not the cause of the emergency," explains Vicky O’Leary, Paramedic Clinical Lead for GWAS.

"The next step is to open up alternative ways of providing care that will result in a patient with dementia not automatically being transported to an acute hospital emergency department unless it is needed to receive treatment to a specific clinical condition linked to the emergency call.

"The final stage of our strategy is the introduction of an information leaflet designed to provide support, information and useful links for patients suffering from dementia, their families and carers."

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