Presenter: Alejandro Venable-Croft, Bioengineering, Global Public Health Scholars
An increasing amount of the world’s population is aging and thus a higher percentage will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or Dementia. My practicum project is focused on how healthcare providers interact with patients with these disorders and their families. The goal is to interview workers at a nursing home/adult day care center that regularly interacts with these types of disorders to see what challenges they face in caring for these patients as well as observing what they can do. In addition, surveys will be given out to the families of these patients to gauge how much they know about the disease as well as what they worry about most when it comes to their loved one. The result will be a plan that is an amalgamation of this information that could theoretically be implemented to centers that care for AD/Dementia patients to increase quality of patient care and family education. The plan will also come with a feasibility assessment of implementation of the plan.
I really loved your presentation and learned a lot! I have a very personal connection to this disease as I just lost my grandfather to it. This presentation really taught me a lot that I did not already know. I was most interested in the idea that primary caregivers get depression due to taking care of their partner/family. This truly shows how hard this disease is on every one that is effected. A question I have for you is whether or not you think living in a care home or living at their actual home is better for everyone involved?
This was a wonderful presentation on Alzheimers and Dementia patients. It is heartbreaking to hear some of the things you mention. I have a personal family connection to Alzheimers and understand some of the hardships mentioned. I also found it interesting how you made the connection to COVID-19 response in your project with the disease impacting the elderly population.
This was a very interesting topic to learn about, and it must have been very upsetting that you could not conduct the research in person. Nonetheless, you did a great job explaining the topic and what you were still able to do from afar. One question I have is, how does care and the interactions within it, differ when comparing it between direct family members and adult day care faculty?
I too have a personal connection to Alzheimer’s. My great grandmother had early onset Alzheimer’s for several decades and ultimately, had to be moved into a home where she would die with the disease. It is interesting to study how this disease affects people differently, how people with Alzheimer’s interact in the context of adult day care facilities, and to hear data related to the stress and depression that caregivers feel when providing for their loved one with the disease.